


Bad Company

by ClaraxBarton, Kangofu_CB



Category: Gundam Wing
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, Gang Violence, Human Trafficking, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Moral Dilemmas, Post-Canon, Undercover Missions, Undercover as a Couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-05-30
Packaged: 2019-03-29 17:29:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 12
Words: 60,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13931859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ClaraxBarton/pseuds/ClaraxBarton, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kangofu_CB/pseuds/Kangofu_CB
Summary: "The only hell and the only paradise are the ones we build ourselves." - UnknownYears after the wars, Preventers has decided to tackle one of the most powerful and oldest of all the Terran crime syndicates.  Embedded dangerously deep in an undercover operation targeting the violent and bloodthirsty Sinaloa Cartel, Trowa Barton is pushed beyond even his flexible morals - and when his new "partner" arrives in the very unexpected and unwelcome form of Duo Maxwell, the one person he'd been trying to protect at all costs, both men must deal with the realization that preserving peace for humanity is turning into a bloodsport.What follows is race against time to uncover the evidence they need to bring Sinaloa, and its beautiful but deadly leaders, down - all while keeping each other alive in the process





	1. Prologue: God's Gonna Cut You Down

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is dark. It explores the way the lines between good and bad, black and white are blurred, for those who work from the inside to bring down the bad guys. Clara and I do not, at any point, get graphic in our descriptions, but there is a lot of sensitive subject matter. We have tagged as clearly as possible, and individual chapters will contain individual warnings. As a general rule this fic contains: implied torture, death, description of a human trafficking organization and its methods, the surrounding implications of human trafficking including forced prostitution and what amounts to slavery, drug and alcohol use, and drug trafficking. We understand that these subjects are not for everyone. We have made every effort to be respectful and accurate without being gratuitous or disturbing. The bad guys are bad. The good guys are, sometimes, not much better. 
> 
> We use a liberal sprinkling of Spanish and Russian in this fic, and neither of us are native speakers of either. We’ve relied heavily on the internet, and so we apologize for any mistakes. We have also included translations at the end of each chapter in the form of footnotes.

_ You can run on for a long time _

_ Run on for a long time _

_ Run on for a long time _

_ Sooner or later God'll cut you down _

_ Sooner or later God'll cut you down _

_ -Johnny Cash _

* * *

 

Something was rotting.

__

The cloying scent carried on the wind, leaves lifting and vines swaying and death spreading.

__

Trowa swung the machete, pushing aside yet another razor-sharp frond. His sweat was already burning the thin cuts on his face and arm. 

__

He had gone tearing off into the jungle, giving chase, determined to prevent everything being ruined.

__

Overhead, the sunlight was merciless, glaring through the tropical canopy, reminding Trowa that this was anywhere but  _ paradise _ .

__

The irate squawk of a bird being disturbed made Trowa pause.

__

He scanned the foliage, waiting for more sound, some signal of what direction, where-

__

_ There _ .

__

A flash of white and red.

__

Trowa hurtled forward, lunging through the underbrush, ducking his head to avoid more lacerations, charging towards his prey.

__

He came up short in an unexpected clearing, nearly tripping over the corpse. 

__

He sheathed the machete and inspected the remains.

__

It was a javelina, the belly bloated and the pelt mottled with flies and maggots. The eyes were gone, the mouth open and tongue distended. Perched on the trees above, vultures glared down at Trowa.

__

“Argh!”

__

Trowa turned just in time to see the man charging at him, barely managing to catch the swing of the tree branch on his elbow instead of his jaw.

__

He staggered back several steps from the blow, and the man pushed his advantage, wielding the branch again and bringing it down on Trowa’s shoulder with furious, desperate force.

__

Trowa hissed at the sharp, radiating pain, ignored the welling blood running down his arm, and took hold of the branch with both hands.

__

He lifted his right foot and shoved his boot into the man’s gut, hard, sending him flying backwards.

__

He landed on the javelina, rolled off of the decaying corpse with a disgusted cry, and tried to crawl away.

__

Trowa hefted the branch, closed the space between them, and swung it against the man’s left side.

__

He grunted, and when Trowa repeated the attack, he fell and curled around the injury.

__

Trowa stood over him, glaring down at the sweaty, sniveling man.

__

“Please.  _ Please _ . I’ll give you anything. Just let me go. Just-” He cried out again when Trowa planted his booted foot on his belly, pushing down with enough force to make the other man writhe in pain. 

__

“Anything?” Trowa repeated, letting himself sneer.

__

The man nodded, pathetically eager to please.

__

“Anything. Yes. Yes,  _ anything _ . You- Come with me. I know where the money is. All of it. I know where  _ she _ keeps-”

__

Trowa tossed the branch away and pulled out his machete. The man’s eyes fixed on the blade, and he whimpered.

__

“You know where  _ all _ of the money is? You have access to all of the accounts?”

__

“No-no-no, not- not all of them. But enough. I know enough. Please,  _ please _ .” The man clutched at Trowa’s leg, pale hands digging into the tanned flesh of Trowa’s calf. 

__

Trowa kicked free, and then reached down to haul the man to his feet.

__

He started to drag him back towards the camp.

__

“No!  _ No _ ! You can’t- Don’t, please don’t! You don’t understand! You don’t know what they’ll do to me.  _ Please _ .”

__

Trowa had a very good idea of what they would do to the man, and he jerked him upright as he tripped over a rock.

__

“Move,” he hissed when he met resistance.

__

Trowa had been the one to wing him, earlier, when the man had first taken off, and he shifted his grip on the arm he’d grabbed, digging his thumb into the bullet wound.

__

“You don’t know what  _ I _ will do to you if you don’t move your ass  _ now _ .”

__

The man was sobbing by the time they arrived back at the camp, walking out of the jungle and onto the perfectly-manicured lawn of the hacienda like wayward travelers who had stumbled into paradise.

__

The men who aimed submachine guns at them shattered that illusion immediately.

__

The man was back to stumbling and trying to pull away from Trowa, and when they finally arrived on the back deck, when the water from the pool nearly blinded them with reflected sunlight, the man made one last, guttural plea.

__

Trowa shoved him down onto his knees in front of the teak lounge chair, just outside of the umbrella’s shade.

__

“Well, well, well. Did you enjoy your little jaunt through the jungle, Branson?” The voice was cool and precise, slightly accented words teasing at them.

__

“Please, please,  _ la mujer _ . There’s been a mistake. I didn’t- I would  _ never _ \- betray you.”

__

Trowa couldn’t help but snort. Branson had certainly changed his tune, from bartering with Trowa for his life in the jungle to claiming innocence now.

__

Dark eyes flicked over to Trowa.

__

“You’re bleeding.”

__

He looked down at his forearm and saw the wide gash from catching the branch. He grimaced. It would need stitches.

__

An imperious wave of a single, perfectly-manicured hand had Trowa stepping back.

__

“Get that taken care of. In the meantime, Branson, you and I need to have a little chat with Anhil. Anhil, get the pliers.”

__

Trowa stepped back, ignoring the renewed pleas from the man cowering on the deck beside the pool.

__

Without looking, Trowa headed towards the hacienda.

__

“ _ Kotyenok _ , what have you been playing with?”

__

The words were delivered playfully, but when Trowa looked into Salome’s blue eyes, there was nothing but ice. She gave a careless toss of her hair, sending the pink and blonde locks to one side as she arched an eyebrow at his silence.

__

“You’ll be needing a new accountant,” he said.

__

Salome sucked in her cheeks and made an irritated noise.

__

“Don’t tell me Branson did that to you?” She let out a sharp, derisive laugh. “Perhaps he isn’t the only one we need to replace, hm? Good help is so hard to find these days.”

__

She sighed and shook her head at him.

__

Trowa walked away, just as Branson started shouting.

__

The smell of the javelina putrefying in the jungle followed him inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> La mujer: boss lady. Spanish  
> Kotyenok: kitten. Russian  
> Javelina: also known as a Peccary or skunk pig. Basically the size of a large dog.


	2. I Still Miss Someone

_I go out on a party_  
_And look for a little fun_  
_But I find a darkened corner_  
_‘Cause I still miss someone._  
\- Johnny Cash

* * *

 

Duo grinned cheekily at the young female agent staring wide-eyed at him from across the hall.

A hand shoved him from behind, between where his arms were cuffed tightly behind his back.

“Move it, Maxwell, we’re not here to sightsee.”

“Aw, Agent Po, but I'm enjoyin’ the scenery!”

He winked at the same agent, watching as she dropped her eyes and hurried away, blushing.

Sally Po snorted, giving him another shove, and he stumbled towards the elevator.

“I’m gonna have to file police brutality, you keep shovin’ me, Agent Po.”

“You wish I was getting brutal with you, Maxwell.”

He grinned at her, too.

The ride up to the thirteenth floor was made in silence, Duo still leering cheerfully and Po rolling her eyes.

“Most buildings don’t got a thirteenth floor,” Duo remarked, for maybe the hundredth time, “‘cause it’s unlucky. And I see they still have you in this shit closet with no view. Maybe if you actually arrested me for something I did, they’d give you a nice corner office and a secretary.”

Po shut the door on his rant, sighing in exasperation. “Here, turn around and I’ll unlock-”

Duo dropped the cuffs on her desk with a metallic rattle, settling himself into the chair across from her desk, rubbing his wrists. He crossed his ankle over his knee and slouched lower in the chair, looking up at her with an arched eyebrow as she pinched the bridge of her nose.

She circled around her desk and took a seat behind it, pulling out a file and flipping it open to skim.

“Ok, I have your report. Do you have anything to add?”

Duo shrugged. “I tagged Ferro’s shipments, so you should be able to track them to their destinations and use that information to trace the rest of the organizations he’s working with. I didn’t get much on Shuisheng’s setup because I don’t blend,” he gestured, loosely, at himself, “but I did manage to create an… opening, that you might be able to utilize on one of the resource satellites. It’s in the report.”

Sally nodded. “We’ve been working with Gong Li towards that end. I’ll need you to brief him before he ships out.”

He nodded again, waiting.

She wouldn’t have risked his cover to bring him in to discuss a report he’d delivered two days ago with nothing high priority in it. She wanted something else.

“We’re having a briefing on Barton’s mission today, and I want you to sit in.”

Well, at least she was saving him the trouble of bugging the meeting room, or her uniform, or other, riskier methods of getting intel. Like hacking the security program he’d helped write.

An official invitation was always better.

“He alright?” Duo forced the words to sound casual, merely inquiring rather than demanding.

“Zechs says he’s fine.”

Duo snorted his opinion of that. “Zechs says a lot of things. Why do you want me there?”

“We have to adjust the parameters to accommodate the new legislation Relena is trying to push through.”

They were bumping up the timeline.

It was literally the fastest way to fuck-up an op.

He sighed. “Lead the way.”

*

No one looked all that surprised by his presence when he followed Sally into the small briefing room, even though Duo was back from his previous assignment nearly a week early. Five pairs of eyes glanced up at him as he leaned against the wall and crossed his arms, then they turned back to where Une was setting up a projector as Sally slid into the remaining empty seat.

“Barton has been embedded in the Sinaloa Cartel for the last eight months, working his way up to the upper echelons of the organization, trying to gather enough evidence to shut down operations permanently and prosecute this woman-”

The projector flashed, the woman appearing on the screen. She had short, dark hair, full lips, and her eyes were hidden behind large sunglasses. She was lounging, the very picture of relaxation, on a teak chair next to a sparkling pool. At the edges of the photo, Duo could make out the silhouettes of several heavily-armed men.

“Alessandra Vasiliev. We believe this is an alias. She’s the current head of the cartel, and her rise in the ranks was littered with bodies. She also nearly doubled the Cartel’s territory following her takeover, most of it carved out after the Barton Uprising in the subsequent power vacuum.”

They had sent Trowa to the fucking Sinaloa Cartel.

What in the actual fuck?

Duo and Trowa had a system when they went into deep cover, something they’d worked out over the years, something that helped both of them feel reassured. They mailed postcards to dead drops at predetermined intervals, and although they’d both missed drops in the past - undercover ops were notoriously unpredictable, after all - Duo had checked his box when he’d returned two days ago and found there’d been nothing from the other man in weeks. He was well past his standard check-in time.

Duo didn’t actually have any official details about Trowa’s current op. Duo had been gone on his own mission when the other man had left, probably halfway between one of the hundred L2 to L5 runs he’d gone on, tracking contraband weapons and infiltrating low-level smuggling operations. Trowa’s first postcard had been blank, just an ocean vista, Bienvenidos Mexico! in curling script on the front. So he knew where in the Earth Sphere Trowa was, but not much else. Subsequent postcards had narrowed the locale slightly, using vintage maps, picturesque resorts, and tourists traps. Duo could find Trowa, if he had to; they’d always made sure of that.

He hadn’t planned to find out he was neck-deep in one of the worst crime syndicates in the Earth Sphere.

The projector flashed again.

“Known associates. Salome - no last name.” Young, blonde, beautiful. All the mannerisms of a merciless killer, judging by the assessing stare she was giving the unknown man pictured with her. “There seems to be some question as to what role she actually plays in the organization, though it’s common knowledge that she’s killed a half-dozen people in rival operations.”

“Anhil - last name also unknown. Lieutenant.” Dark, muscular, aviators and slicked-back hair.

“Branson. Former accountant. Presumed dead.”

More faces flashed across the screen, most of them young, many of them beautiful. Vasiliev definitely had a type. All of them were likely viewed as expendable, based on the sheer number that Une said were deceased. Enforcers, lieutenants, foot soldiers. Only the first half-dozen had been around with any kind of consistency.

Une shut the projector off. “The Sinaloa Cartel is the largest drug and human trafficking organization in operation between the colonies and Earth. People pay for passage to Earth, are conscripted as drug mules, and upon arrival, find themselves deeply in the Cartel’s debt, forced to work off their cost of passage plus interest. Most end up as sex workers, getting trafficked from location to location.”

The lucky ones ended up that way, Duo didn't say.

Most of them ended up dead.

He knew all about the Sinaloa Cartel.

“The organization itself is large, multinational, and fiercely loyal to Vasiliev. She took brutal control of the Cartel, killed those who didn't agree with her, and terrorizes anyone who dissents.”

And they’d sent Trowa into the middle of it.

Jesus.

Duo glanced around the table in disbelief.

No one seemed to think any of this was a problem. He was surrounded by the peak of the Preventers organization, and they didn’t seem to understand anything about what they’d asked Trowa to do.

Zechs looked bored, for chrissake, though Noin at least seemed to have the sense to be somewhat concerned, judging by the furrow of her brow. Wufei was his typical stoic self, having never considered the possibility that something might be actually, literally impossible.

Like bringing down the Sinaloa Cartel. It had been operating since before the colonies.

Sally was watching Duo, her face dark and unreadable.

“Barton is well-placed to provide us the opportunity to implant another agent,” Zechs finally spoke. “The Cartel has a serious problem with leaks as of late, and they’ve managed to... misplace their accountant. It wouldn’t be a stretch for them to lose their electronic security expert. We could get someone in and get access to their system more quickly, hopefully before the new legislation passes.”

They intended to send in another agent.

Duo realized, belatedly, that they meant to send Heero, of all fucking people.

As an ‘electronic security expert’.

For the fucking cartel.

Heero wasn’t total shit at undercover work - that title unquestioningly belonged to Wufei. But he wasn’t great, either, and what he excelled at was undercover work involving electronic espionage. Where there were no face to face meetings, no people to convince of his sincerity.

“You want Heero to infiltrate the Sinaloa Cartel?” Duo’s words were flat, and he hadn’t even been planning to speak before they were tumbling out of his mouth. “You can’t be serious.”

Zechs sneered at him, but Duo was long accustomed to that. He knew what Zechs saw when he looked at him, with the ratty jeans and the tattoos and- Well, at least Zechs, of all people, couldn’t judge him for his hair, but that was about the only thing the other man hadn’t had a snide remark for at some point in the past.

It was Heero who looked the most visibly affronted.

“You don’t think I can do it.” The words were delivered in his most arch, nasal tone, not a hint of a question to them.

“Heero’s computer skills are more than up to par-”

Noin was speaking, but Duo waved her off, still looking at Heero.

Duo slouched against the wall a little more, let his posture go loose and lax, eyeing the other man insolently. “Eh lindo,” he grinned, the dark tone conveying more meaning than the actual words, “favor va a matar más rápido que una bala.”

Taking in the dark-haired man’s blank expression, Duo sighed. “You don’t speak the language, and even if you did, you don’t speak the lingo. This isn’t like working a computer case. Your skills don’t matter. Or at least, they don’t matter as much as your loyalty.”

More blank looks, and not just from Heero.

“A gang like that?” he gestured vaguely towards the screen where the projector had shown the key members of the cartel. “You gotta prove you belong before you get to anything good.”

The fact that Trowa had made it so far into the inner circle in such a short time meant he’d probably had to do a lot of fucked up shit.

Sally was sitting back in her chair, glancing over the files that had gone unreviewed on the table so far, but Une was watching him shrewdly, her face thoughtful. He had Heero’s full attention now, and Noin’s too.

Zechs, on the other hand-

“Eh, chochito,” he called to the other man, who scowled, recognizing he’d been insulted, even if he wasn’t sure exactly how. “How’d Branson die?”

The blond shrugged, unconcerned. “Barton didn’t say.”

“Yeah?” Duo huffed a humorless laugh. “He probably didn’t say who else he’s killed, either, but even you can’t be that stupid.”

Zechs rolled his eyes as he stood, gathering his things. “I’ll tell Barton we’re sending someone in. My presence isn’t required for this melodrama. One former pilot is as good as another.” He breezed out, hair trailing behind him like a shimmering, platinum cape.

Talk about melodrama.

Taking the abandoned chair, Duo scooted into the table, addressing Une earnestly. “Look, this is what I do, this is what I’m here for. My skills, my experience, it’s for ops like this. Heero’s great behind a screen, but, no offense, this is out of his area of expertise. I speak the language, I’m familiar with the way the cartel works, and my computer skills are as good as or better than his.”

“The cartel speaks Russian as well as Spanish, Duo,” Sally murmured, not looking up from her report.

“I’m passable. Izvinitye, ya plokho ponimayu po-russki, no ya mogu zakazat' napitok.”

Heero snorted.

Duo’d forgotten he spoke Russian.

“If I hadn’t been gone when this came down, I’d have been first choice for this op anyway, and we all know it.”

It grated on Heero, Duo could see, but he really didn’t care at the moment. He’d deal with that, later, once this was straightened out. Before Heero ran off and got himself - or worse, himself and Trowa - killed.

“Alright, Maxwell,” Une said slowly, “you want this assignment so bad, you’ve got it.”

*  
Sally smuggled him out the same way she’d brought him in - cuffed and smirking - depositing him outside the back entrance of the building. She didn’t offer to unlock the cuffs this time, just held her hand out expectantly as Duo jimmied them off and tossed them to her.

“Good work in there,” she offered, ducking back inside before he had a chance to respond.

He made it about three blocks before Heero caught up, elbowing him into the narrow alley space between two of the downtown buildings and cornering him just out of sight of the street.

“What was that, Duo?” Heero’s face was hard, jaw tight.

“Tell me I’m wrong. Tell me that while I was gone you suddenly became an expert on gang infiltration. You don’t even look the part, Heero.” Duo stared down at him, his own teeth clenched, chin jutting out mulishly.

Heero sighed. “This is a bad idea, and you know it. There’s a reason they don’t partner agents who-”

“It’s a worse idea for you to go. You’ll be dead inside a week. ‘Death before disloyalty’ isn’t just pretty words to these people. Do you have any idea what kind of fucked up shit goes on in the Sinaloa Cartel? Because I do. And if you aren’t careful, you’ll get Trowa killed while you’re at it. The first time you hesitate, the first time you look soft, they’ll be on to you. Not even Howard does business with Sinaloa, if he can avoid it.”

Taking a step back, Heero seemed to surrender the point.

“That’s true,” he conceded, “but you can’t claim objectivity, either. You’re invested.”

“Of course I’m invested, Heero,” Duo scrubbed a hand through his hair in frustration. “Don’t be stupid. You’re invested too. We’re all invested.” The words came out more bitter than Duo had intended, but that didn’t change the fact that they were true.

Heero half-shrugged, humming noncommittally.

Duo relaxed some at the other man’s casual attitude. Maybe he was going to actually let it go.

“Come over for dinner,” Heero offered suddenly. “It’ll take a few days to get everything set up. You’ve been gone for months.”

So he hadn’t given up, he’d just changed tactics.

Duo snorted. “Why, so Quatre can ferret out some more information he’s not supposed to have, and give you more ammunition to make your case? I’ll pass, thanks.”

*

Despite his arguments, Duo still found himself on Quatre and Heero’s doorstep for dinner two nights later, glancing around reflexively as he rang the doorbell.

Duo’s face had been blasted all over the colony news when he’d been captured by OZ, but it was the face of a teenage boy ten years his junior, and while Duo traded on his name for his work with Preventers, his face actually wasn’t all that recognizable anymore.

The hair, maybe, but not the face. He’d worn it in a loose tail tonight, just in case. He’d even gone to the trouble of making himself look more presentable, losing the worn jeans and leather he was most comfortable in and digging out slacks and a collared shirt for the occasion. Anything to make him more anonymous.

Still, that didn’t stop him from being cautious, from looking over his shoulder as he stood on the front stoop of a modest townhome in a pricey neighborhood.

It wouldn’t do for him to be recognized outside Quatre Winner’s home.

Heero opened the door with his characteristically impassive face, glancing over Duo’s shoulders with the same overabundance of caution Duo employed before stepping back and motioning him inside.

Duo stepped over the threshold, hands in his trouser pockets, taking in the changes to the room since he’d last visited. It had been months, since before his last assignment, and it would likely be months again before he was back.

Quatre appeared around the corner with a bottle of wine and two glasses, the overtly cheerful look on his face putting Duo instantly on edge. Quatre Winner only looked that happy when he already knew he’d won.

Or when he was planning something he was certain would be successful.

“Duo! I’m so happy you made it!”

Duo accepted the hug and the wine without comment, following the blond-haired man through to the kitchen.

“Love what you’ve done with the place,” Duo said, glancing around, noting the new paint and refinished hardwoods. Quatre had purchased the townhome with Heero almost a year previously, something smaller and less ostentatious than the typical Winner mansion, when their relationship had gotten serious, and they’d been working on it ever since.

“Oh yes, thank you! I forgot you hadn’t seen it. We had Trowa over not long after the floors were finished.”

Bright blue eyes flashed over at him from where Quatre had turned to pull something out of the oven.

So it was going to be like that.

Duo held back the sigh threatening to escape, refusing to show any weakness.

Not that it mattered. Quatre was clearly planning to dig it all out tonight anyway.

He should have just left early for Mexico. Surely infiltrating a cartel was less likely to blow up in his face than navigating dinner with Quatre when he was on a mission.

Heero snorted at the look on his face.

Duo tilted his glass back, taking several long swallows of what was undoubtedly expensive wine. Maybe if he got drunk enough this would seem like fun.

“Speaking of Trowa,” the other man continued, basting what appeared to be a perfectly-roasted chicken, “have you heard from him recently?”

“Not a word,” Duo quipped, looking around for the wine. “He left on his assignment while I was working this last job.” Heero helpfully passed him the bottle, smirking all the while. Duo filled the glass well above what one would consider polite, perching on a stool at the nearby bar.

“How strange,” Quatre mused. “I really thought you kept in better communication than that, your relationship being what it is.”

Duo kept his face carefully blank.

  
What Quatre knew versus what Quatre knew were two very different things.

Quatre suspected a lot of things about his and Trowa’s ‘relationship’, but he didn’t know nearly as much as he implied.

“It must be really hard on the two of you, both of you gone for long periods, different places, different times. It’ll be nice to be on a job together for once, I’m sure.”

Heero had a big fucking mouth. Duo glared at him over the edge of his glass, not that the other man looked the least bit contrite.

“This isn’t the kinda job anyone would call nice, Q,” Duo answered, rolling his eyes. “We’ll be lucky if we don’t end up dead. Or worse.”

“What’s worse than dead?” Heero asked, sarcastically.

Duo could think of more than a few things, and the fact that Heero couldn’t only proved his point that Heero didn’t need to be going on this assignment. He shrugged in response.

“Still,” Quatre said, expertly quartering the chicken, “it will be good to work together again.” He paused, knife in hand. “Unless, of course, something happens, and your objectivity is compromised, and the whole operation is blown. That could be problematic.”

Blowing his breath out of his nose, Duo prayed for patience.

“Are you-” He paused as a plate of food appeared in front of him. “Are you trying to convince me that you could go into an undercover operation with any of us and maintain the objectivity to stand by and do nothing? Because I’m not buying.”

Quatre took the seat next to him, where Duo could just see him out of the corner of his eye. He brought a forkful of food to his mouth, chewing thoughtfully. “I’m not an undercover Preventers agent.”

“You’re a goddamn Gundam pilot!” Duo sucked his breath in through his teeth, already regretting his outburst. “Look,” he tried again, “this is not like a regular mission. This involves the biggest players in the game, and Trowa is already at the very top. He’s not going to be able to just leave. It doesn’t work like that. He has to see this through to the end, and if I go back him up, then at least maybe he has a shot of surviving it.”

Duo turned to stare Heero down, to watch his face as he continued.

“This isn’t about objectivity or investment or whatever words you wanna use to make me feel bad for putting you off an op you aren’t qualified for. This is about me goin’ and doin’ what I can to keep Tro’s ass out of the fire, regardless of whatever relationship you think I have with him. I’d do the same for either one of you. Now, did you invite me over for dinner, or was this strictly a guilt trip? Because I’m not that hungry at the moment.”

Heero, at least, had the grace to look abashed, but Quatre simply nodded as though Duo had confirmed some private speculation.

The rest of the evening passed without incident, Quatre apparently feeling he’d made his point and Heero finally seeming to understand he’d been about to be in way over his head. They asked a few questions about his recent travels, though nothing about the specifics of his mission, and gave him a tour of the nearly-complete townhouse.

On his way out the door, Quatre pressed something into his hands without comment, waving him out with a quelling look.

Behind the wheel of his car, Duo pulled it out to examine whatever it was.

The size of a quarter and about twice as thick, it was a sleek, nondescript black device with no identifying marks. Holding it under the faint light from the streetlamp, Duo found a small switch along the edge that he could flip with his thumbnail.

A few seconds later, Quatre texted him.

In case of emergency.

*

Duo dropped his keys in the bowl on the entry table and looked around at the dark, empty apartment. He’d only been back a couple of days, but it looked as unlived-in as ever, still echoing and hollow. He and Trowa had agreed to share a space long before they’d agreed to much of anything else, snagging a two bedroom in a moderately good part of town where the neighbors didn’t pay you much attention, but you weren’t likely to get robbed either.

And then they’d proceeded to basically never live in it.

Une kept both of them out on missions a good portion of the time, and their downtime seldom overlapped for more than a few days or weeks before one or both of them were out again.

Duo had gotten a cactus as a joke, since he couldn’t get a pet, and it had been funny until the damn thing had died of neglect.

A fucking cactus.

He poked his head in what was ostensibly Trowa’s room on his way down the hall. The room was impersonal and neat as a pin, Trowa having left in the middle of Duo’s assignment, the bed made and the room stale. Duo’s room looked marginally more lived-in, and Duo suspected Trowa had spent at least some of his nights there while he’d been gone.

Duo did the same, when Trowa left on an assignment and Duo was still home. Slept wherever Trowa had slept, whichever bed that happened to be in, until the sheets no longer held his scent.

He sighed as he unlaced his shoes, kicking them into the closet, and stripped off the stuffy clothes, tossing them in the hamper, before reaching for worn sweats and a t-shirt.

No, he couldn’t quite be objective about Trowa.

Not that he was particularly objective where any of the former pilots were concerned, but Quatre was right in thinking that Trowa was different.

Hell, Duo hadn’t been able to be objective about Trowa since he’d found him at the circus, bewildered and unsure, and had sent Quatre to straighten him out. His objectivity had decreased exponentially when the other man - boy, really - had chosen to fight with them despite his amnesia, unsure of how much good he’d even be. Had quietly befriended him, tried to be supportive, had even kept his mouth shut when Trowa used the godforsaken ZERO system.

At least he’d come out of that with his head screwed on straight.

Then there’d been the Barton incident, Trowa playing the role he played best - double agent. Done so well even Duo hadn’t been sure of him, but he’d still managed to get both of them out of there with their skin still intact.

Despite Heero’s fucking machismo.

Then they’d been approached by Wufei, contracted by Une, agreed to an apparently endless string of undercover missions and infiltration jobs, and at some point…

Well, at some point they’d found a connection, something that mattered, and what had started as stress relief and companionship had become something else entirely that neither of them spent a lot of time talking about - or, in Duo’s case, thinking about.

And damn Quatre for meddling in it anyway!

Duo was a big fan of ‘if no one asked, then he didn’t tell’, and Trowa wasn’t exactly in the habit of discussing his personal business, and for the most part, it had been fine.

Until Trowa had gotten injured on an op and had ended up in the hospital afterwards with a raging infection, and Quatre had just happened to turn up to offer his assistance only to find Duo sitting at the other man’s bedside, emotions a tangled mess.

And that had been all she wrote.

Quatre didn’t ask and Duo didn’t tell, but obviously, Quatre had said something to Heero, who was like a fucking pitbull, and who had been hounding Duo about whatever was going on with him and Trowa ever since.

Falling into bed with a groan, Duo tugged one of the pillows closer, tucking it under his chin, and imagined that he could still smell Trowa on it, which was a fucking joke because the other man had been gone for months already.

Didn’t matter anyway. Duo would be seeing him soon enough.

Of course, it remained to be seen whether Trowa would be happy about that.

Duo had a feeling the answer was going to be a resounding no.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> Lindo - “pretty boy” (Spanish)
> 
> favor va a matar más rápido que una bala - “favor’s gonna kill you faster than a bullet” (Spanish)
> 
> chochito - “pussy” (Spanish)
> 
> Izvinitye, ya plokho ponimayu po-russki, no ya mogu zakazat' napitok. - “ I don’t speak Russian well, but I can order a drink.“


	3. Walk the Line

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter includes civilian deaths. It’s not a graphic description, but it does happen, and we didn’t want anyone to be caught unawares.

_I keep a close watch on this heart of mine_  
_I keep my eyes wide open all the time_  
 _I keep the ends out for the tie that binds_

  
-Johnny Cash

* * *

 

 

There was no such thing as ‘vacation time’ in the cartel. You got in, you did your job, and you kept doing your job until you fucked up enough to get killed.

Still, there were days, weeks sometimes, when work was light, when the compound Alessandra ran the Sinaloa cartel from was nearly empty, with only a few enforcers and palomniks roaming around.

She treated her employees like family. Like the kind of family that she had handpicked and would turn on and devour in an instant if they betrayed her.

“She’s like a praying mantis,” Anhil had muttered, once, while he and Trowa leaned against a wall and watched one of the enforcers have his fingernails ripped out after Alessandra discovered he had been stealing from her. Trowa had nodded in agreement, had kept his eyes focused on the scene of torture and on the dark-eyed woman who sat on her teak chair, her throne, and smirked at the agonized cries from the man she had once trusted.

As family, most of the employees who oversaw the details of the cartel’s empire lived at the compound. Located in Mazatlan, on the northern end of the beach, away from the tourists and locals alike, it wasn’t exactly a hardship to have the ocean so close, to have the vibrant jungle stretching out around them. But it was isolating, was a constant reminder that they were deep in the wilderness, surrounded by primal earth, their very lives controlled by Alessandra’s every whim.

Trowa had worked his way up the ranks slowly, had been on-hand during a riot in L3, had helped Alessandra’s people escape the local enforcement and, knowing that they were all too low in the cartel to give him any valuable intel, had bartered his way back to Earth, hitching a ride on the cargo shuttle smuggling six-dozen hollow-eyed colonials past Terran customs. Trowa had helped unload them, had helped restrain the ones who realized, too quickly, just what was about to happen to them, had helped collect the drugs that each of the ‘passengers’ had been forced to ingest before they had been cleared through L3 customs and allowed to board the shuttle in the first place. And then Trowa had requested an audience with Alessandra, and had found himself presented, instead, to Salome.

At the time, Trowa hadn’t known who she was - Preventers knew she existed, knew Alessandra had an attachment to her, but nothing else. That first meeting had taught Trowa a great many things about the pale-skinned, pale-eyed, pink-haired woman. Things he wasn’t likely to ever forget.

He managed to pass her test, but she didn’t take him to Alessandra. Instead, she handed him off to Anhil, one of Alessandra’s favorite and most trusted lieutenants.

It was a tricky balance, working his way up.

He proved his worth to Anhil by following his commands without question, by watching Anhil’s back and keeping ambitious enforcers on their toes. Anhil, who had helped Alessandra carve her path to the top of the cartel, didn’t trust initiative unless it meant Trowa fetching him a coffee unasked.

Trowa quickly memorized how Anhil took his coffee.

And he learned other things about the man who was both his in and, if Trowa’s real motive was uncovered, his future executioner. He learned that Anhil’s brother had been killed by the last boss, that the brother had left behind a family that Anhil sent money to and occasionally left the compound to visit. Trowa also learned that Anhil was gay, that he favored the young, smooth-skinned boys who frequented the pools at the resorts Alessandra ran.

And if ever Trowa couldn’t find Anhil, that was the first place to look.

The cartel was between shipments - the last cargo shuttle from L3 had landed at the local airfield four months ago, and the next was scheduled to arrive sometime that day.

There was never a definite flight plan - while the cartel could grease enough palms in L3 to ship their cargo as ‘migrant workers’, in order to get the shuttle onto Earth, the crew needed to stop mid-flight, weld the cargo holds shut, and haul out crates of low quality synth plasma that was best engineered in space. If the cargo was cleared through Terran customs, it still needed to fly under the radar and avoid any of the territorial patrols before landing in Mazatlan, where the airport was entirely controlled by Alessandra’s people.

Trowa had been at the compound, idly spying on the new accountant, Haverford Smith, when Salome informed him that the shuttle had made it through Terran customs. She had waved her hand at him dismissively, lazily instructing Trowa to fetch Anhil without even looking up from her phone.

So, Trowa headed down to Pueblo Bonito, and, sure enough, Anhil was seated at one of the umbrella-shaded poolside tables, sipping from a glass of beer and watching the tanned tourists frolicking in the clear blue water.

Trowa pulled a chair out from the table noisily, smirking when Anhil winced and glared up at him.

He threw himself into the chair, stretching his legs out and folding his hands behind his head. It was a pose he had adopted from Duo, the kind of relaxed ‘I’m so comfortable how could I possibly be thinking of how to kill you?’ pose that the other man could fall into so easily. Duo-

Trowa ruthlessly squashed that trail of thought. Now was not the time to think about him. Never was the time to think about him, if Trowa wanted to live.

“They let you out, tigryenok?” Anhil asked. Alessandra had saddled Trowa with the nickname after watching him fight off three drunken tourists who had been too stupid to realize who Alessandra was when they tried to accost her at one of Mazatlan’s nightclubs. Tiger, she had called him, the Russian dripping off her tongue while her dark eyes ran over his face and her elegant, deadly fingers caressed his shoulder. Salome, of course, had immediately corrupted it, had insisted on calling Trowa kotyenok, kitten. Both nicknames amused Anhil, who Alessandra only called moy medved, my bear, to tease him when she was in a good mood.

Trowa flashed his teeth at the old joke. Loosed from his cage. It was too ironic to have ever amused him.

“Shipment’s on track,” he said simply as he caught the eye of a passing waiter and signaled for a glass of whatever Anhil was drinking.

“Who’s caught your eye so far?” Trowa asked, scanning the pool himself for likely candidates. He whistled as his eyes landed on the very round, very tan, very exposed ass of a man wearing a bright green thong. Trowa watched his muscles flex as the man rose from the pool and used the steps to exit.

“That one?” Trowa asked with a leer.

Anhil gave a negligent shrug.

“He’s got tits,” he groused.

Trowa had to laugh, but when the man turned to the side, he could see the very defined pectoral muscles on him. Not Anhil’s type. He liked slim-figured, big-assed boys who had a thing for older, browner, sturdier men.

They sat in companionable near-silence for a while, Trowa pointing out likely candidates for Anhil’s affections and Anhil rejecting or shrugging off nearly every one of them.

“What’s on your mind?” Trowa finally asked when Anhil waved off his suggestion to invite the waiter - slim, fit and directing a grin that was somehow both sly and shy at Anhil - to come back to the compound.

Anhil took a thoughtful sip of beer, the second one he had started since Trowa joined him.

“Security breaches,” he rumbled.

“At the compound?” Trowa hadn’t heard anything, and he made it a point to listen.

“No. The cyber network. You know anything about that shit?”

Trowa took a sip from his glass and then shook his head.

“Hermano, I know how to check the baseball scores and look at porn. You asking for my help, or accusing me of breaking things?”

Anhil snorted.

“You got some weird taste in shit too,” he muttered, shaking his head. “The new accountant mentioned some ‘holes’,” Anhil held up his hands and emphasized air quotes around the word, “in our system. And last month, Marco said he was locked out of the system.”

“Marco, the cyber security expert?” Trowa sneered, emphasizing the title with disgust. He didn’t like Marco - hadn’t, since day one, when the man had made a joke about Trowa being a colonial himself, had suggested that Trowa could be used as a ‘translator’ for the palomniks.

Anhil shrugged. He didn’t care for Marco either - he thought he was just some young punk who partied too hard and didn’t care about the cartel enough. Didn’t think of Alessandra as family, just as his next paycheck.

“He said something happened to the network. Someone had been fiddling with it.”

Trowa finished off his beer.

“He probably doesn’t know what the fuck he’s doing. Remember those Snakeheads we ran into on L3 six, seven weeks ago?”

“The ones who said shit about la mujer?” Anhil’s dark eyes flashed. “Yes. I remember them.” His lips twisted into a grimace. “That’s right - they talked a big game about taking us down, didn’t they? About cutting into our territory and cutting better deals with the L3 customs agents.”

Trowa nodded, scowling himself. It was an unnecessary complication, a rival cartel taking on Alessandra while Trowa was trying to bring her down from within.

“You think it’s them - getting into our system?”

Trowa shrugged.

“No clue. My money’s on Marco fucking up. No tiene dos dedos de frente.”

Anhil drained his beer and left a pile of bills on the table, pausing to scrawl his phone number on the top one before tucking it under his empty glass.

“He’s a dumbshit,” Anhil agreed.

“Never had problems like this when I was with the Sweepers,” Trowa sighed. “Our tech guy knew his shit. Everyone knew how to do their fucking job, or Howard made sure they found a new one far the fuck away from us.”

Anhil made a face.

“He’s Salome’s cousin, Trowa. He ain’t going nowhere.”

Trowa looked at his phone. It was nearly five.

“We should get to the airfield and set up the perimeter,” he suggested, and Anhil nodded in agreement.

As they walked away from the pool, Trowa looked back to see the waiter collecting the money and empty glasses. The young man grinned as he slid the bill with Anhil’s number into a different pocket than the rest. Trowa shook his head at Anhil’s smirk and eyebrow waggle.

-o-

There were parts of the job that made Trowa question why he was doing this in the first place. Things Trowa had to do that seemed so far down the path of evil that he wasn’t sure how any of it could possibly add up, could possibly lead to good being done.

He understood, logically, that he had to be a bad guy to bring down the cartel. Preventers - and before them, nearly every Terran law enforcement agency for hundreds of years - had tried to bring the cartel down through surveillance, through strictly legal, strictly good means. It hadn’t worked. It had, in fact, failed spectacularly.

The decision had been made to embed an agent in the cartel, to work from within to implode the organization. It was designed to be a long op - the initial estimates had projected two to three years - and there were only a handful of agents capable of carrying something like this off. Just two, really - Duo or Trowa.

And Trowa had made damn sure Duo didn’t get roped into it. When the op had still been in the planning phase, both Duo and Trowa had had a clear schedule. Trowa had gotten wind of the op, had overheard Une and Sally discussing how Duo’s skillset was the best for it, and had quickly inserted himself into the mix, insisting that he would be the better choice, that he had the L3 connection that Duo didn’t, that he didn’t mind accumulating a body count in the name of getting the job done.

Not, of course, that Duo did have a problem with it. Duo was as cunning and ruthless as Trowa - maybe even more so - but Duo was plagued by guilt far more acutely than Trowa. And Duo…

Trowa hated seeing the look in Duo’s eyes when he woke up from a nightmare, when he was wild and sick with regret and anger and his pulse thrummed with fear.

Duo didn’t need to go on this op.

Duo didn’t need to deal with a cartel that trafficked colonials from L3 to Earth, using them as drug mules during the journey, and then selling them off into slavery on Earth once they made it. If they made it.

Trowa had told himself all of that from the start, reminded himself of it each night, in the ten minutes he allowed himself to think about Duo, to think about the rest of the world, the real world.

The reminder had stopped making much of a difference months ago, and on Delivery Days, all it did was make Trowa feel nauseated.

The cargo shuttles typically carried anywhere from one hundred and fifty to two hundred colonials. Enough to make the process of off-boarding them complicated. Add in, of course, the fact that most of them had realized, during the forty-eight hour journey from L3 to Earth, that having to shove a bag of carfentanil up their ass and then being cramming into a ship not rated for that many inhabitants wasn’t going to be the worst thing that happened to them.

After all, the bags still had to be retrieved. And after that…

Trowa remembered the fliers, from his own childhood. Passage Home. Journey to the Land of Opportunity.

He remembered the way the mercs sneered, how they angled their dicks so their piss drenched the curled, stained promises. Everywhere’s the land of opportunity, the captain had always said. Nowhere is home.

It had been more than a decade since then, and the posters hadn’t changed much at all.

Neither, Trowa imagined, had the faces of the colonials when they emerged from the shuttle, blinking and stumbling into the heat and blinding sun, with the half-dozen automatic weapons trained on them.

Most of the time, they were stunned into being docile; most of the time, they didn’t start to panic until they were loaded into the trucks and the roll doors descended, and they were locked into darkness and transported across dirt roads to the abandoned lumber mill to be processed. Then they started to panic, screaming and lunging, emerging bloodied and bruised. Then a few were shot, pushed too close to the handful of guards against their will or, if there was a particularly stupid colonial in the mix, deciding to make a break for freedom.

No one ever escaped.

Today, however, things started off horribly and just continued to go downhill.

As soon as the first dozen colonials were led down the shuttle ramp, Trowa knew something was wrong.

There were too many anxious glances between the colonials, too many people stepping out of the lines they were forced into.

It wasn’t until the third dozen, however, that Trowa realized what was wrong.

There were children. Two of them.

As a general rule, the cartel didn’t traffic anyone who looked under thirteen. It had less to do with ethics and everything to do with reality - children were fragile, and they squirmed. They made for poor drug mules, and while they could be assets in the slave trade, there were simply too many drawbacks to make it a worthwhile investment for the cartel.

Especially when the children came with parents. And these two clearly did.

They broke free of their line, ignoring the shouts of the guards, and went running across the tarmac, wailing, arms held wide.

Two children, and two parents.

Trowa watched the taller of the two children fling themselves into the arms of a thin, hollow-cheeked woman. The shorter child caught up a moment later, curling against their mother and their sibling.

And then the father tried to step out of his line.

“Get the fuck back in line!”

The man ignored the shouted warning from Matvei, running towards the three huddled colonials without hesitation.

“Fuck,” Anhil muttered under his breath.

He and Trowa were posted up beside the trucks, making sure the colonials got inside, letting Matvei and the other enforcers deal with shoving the colonials from the shuttle to the trucks.

Matvei looked furious, but he knew how to handle the situation. He had, after all, been doing this for years.

Unfortunately, Gerhard was closest to the man. Gerhard, who had been pulled from the operation on L3 because his methods of ‘persuading’ colonials to travel to Earth had involved too much violence and drawn the attention of too many government agents.

Gerhard held up his PP-2000 and fired off a burst.

And chaos broke out.

Colonials screamed and hit the ground or started to run - most towards the cover of the shuttle or the truck, but a few took off down the open stretch of tarmac, running straight towards the narrow copse of trees that lined either side.

Trowa swore, and he and Anhil abandoned the truck.

Half of the enforcers took off for the colonials attempting to escape, and the other half started pulling and shoving the remaining colonials towards the truck.

The sound of more gunfire split the already tense atmosphere, and Trowa looked to see the fleeing colonials dropping, red blooming across their backs.

Always preserve the merchandise.

Usually, that meant both the drugs and the colonials. But when the choice was between one or the other, the drugs always won out. Better to kill a colonial attempting to escape and dig the carfentanil out of their corpse than risk them getting picked up by local law enforcement and bringing attention to Alessandra’s operation.

Anhil shoved Gerhard, who shoved him back, and the two started shouting at each other in rapid, angry Spanish.

Trowa’s Spanish was good, not good enough for him to pass as a native speaker, but good enough for him to catch most of Anhil’s insults, good enough for him to understand the threat Gerhard made in response.

He lunged for Gerhard just as the man started to raise his gun again, training it on the family of four kneeling, crying and clinging to each other just feet away.

Gerhard depressed the trigger, and the gun shuddered in Trowa’s grip, pumping out bullet after bullet after bullet until he finally managed to wrest it away.

All Trowa could hear was the pounding of his own heartbeat, the drowning roar of blood in his ears.

Just feet away, four bodies folded to the tarmac, blood pooling around them, still clinging to one another.

-o-

It was late by the time they made it back to the compound, and Anhil remained silent, letting Trowa stew, and likely stewing himself.

At the lumber mill, things had gone swiftly, easily. The colonials had been sorted, led one by one to Matvei, who had drawn the short straw and was tasked with removing the condoms full of carfentanil from the colonials’ rectums, and then locked in, six to a cage, to await permanent relocation.

No one tried to run away.

Halfway through the process, however, Salome arrived. She visited the mill infrequently, and her presence was never a good thing.

Her hair was pulled back into a tight, smooth bun and she wore skintight, studded black leather from neck to foot, defying the heat and humidity that weighed down the rest of them.

She pulled Anhil aside, and they carried on a fierce, whispered conversation for nearly twenty minutes before she called Gerhard to her side and the two of them left.

No one else spoke - about what had happened on the tarmac, about Salome’s appearance and disappearance with Gerhard afterwards - the lumber mill was eerily silent except for the shuffle of feet and the metallic clang of gates being slammed shut.

Anhil set a schedule for the enforcers, three to a shift, reminding them of what to watch for, who to call if shit hit the fan, and then he signalled for Trowa to leave with him.

The older man held out his hand for the keys to the Land Rover, and Trowa wordlessly passed them over. Usually, Anhil let him drive with just a muttered comment about not steering them off the road. Usually, Trowa gave Anhil shit about driving like his grandmother on the rare occasions when Anhil insisted on driving.

Tonight, neither of them spoke until Anhil parked the car in the lot, beside the other black SUVs and the handful of sleek sports cars that Alessandra had accumulated recently.

“You got some shit eating at you, manito.”

Trowa tensed at the words, at Anhil’s oh-so-casual tone. They weren’t in the habit of having deep conversations about their feelings or existential crises.

“Rough day at the office,” Trowa quipped.

Anhil’s lips curled into a sneer.

“Si, si,” he muttered, and then sighed. “You gotta watch what you say, manito, about Marco. You and me,” Anhil waved an index finger back and forth between their bodies, “we know how things are. But in that house,” he jerked his thumb towards the hacienda, “you keep your mouth shut and let that fucker hang himself, yeah?”

Trowa nodded, letting his mouth droop into a sulk.

He knew, of course, to watch what he said. He knew he could talk shit about Marco to Anhil and Anhil alone. Still, if Anhil felt the need to offer him counsel on the issue, Trowa did need to watch himself.

“You did good today, manito,” Anhil continued.

Trowa snorted derisively. Good would have been stopping Gerhard before he had fired his gun the first time.

“I mean it,” Anhil insisted. “You kept your head. You did what you could. Most days, that’s all you can do.”

Trowa swallowed against the sudden dryness in his mouth and the rush of bile in his throat.

He nodded again.

Anhil got out of the car, and Trowa followed, trudging into the hacienda after him, accepting the beer Anhil thrust into his hand and doing his level best to ignore Marco, sprawled on a couch, smoking and playing a video game.

There was a palomnik curled against him, her too-pale skin giving away her colonial origins. She was one of the cargo, an L3 native who had made the mistake of falling for the cartel’s propaganda. But she had caught Salome’s eye months ago when she had arrived, and Salome had pulled the girl aside and given her a bunk in the compound. Palomnik. Pilgrim. Salome called them that, the ‘lucky’ ones who she pulled aside and kept around for the amusement of herself and Salome’s soldiers.

It was ironic, in the gut-churning way that most of Salome’s jokes were.

Salome herself was in the kitchen, grimacing and scrubbing at something on her leather jacket.

Trowa, who had come to the kitchen in search of food and a momentary reprieve from the company of anyone, almost walked back out.

But she saw him and snapped her fingers imperiously.

“Tigryenok, let me see your nails.”

Frowning in confusion, Trowa held out his hands to her.

“Yes, come here.” She grabbed his right hand and pulled him over to the sink. “Look at the studs on the shoulder.”

He did. He also looked at the towel sitting on the counter, stained pink and red with small, soft lumps of pink and gray clumped across it. The same lumps seemed to be clinging to the gold studs on the leather jacket.

“Use your nails and get that shit off, hm?” Salome waved her own hand in Trowa’s face. “My nails are too short.”

Trowa took a long, deep sip of his beer and then set it down on the counter.

He picked up the jacket and started to pick out what he was positive had to be bits of Gerhard.

Salome picked up his beer and drank from it.

Trowa gave her a look, and she laughed before leaning against the counter beside him.

“What happened today cannot happen again,” she said, voice solemn, blue eyes glacial.

“I know.”

Trowa could feel flesh squishing between his skin and fingernails as he scratched it free from the studs.

He could feel her eyes following the movements of his fingers.

“Alessandra and I talk about you.”

If it had been Anhil saying that, Trowa would have made a quip, would have thrown in innuendo and a smirk, and they would have chuckled before Anhil told him to get his mind out of the gutter.

Salome might castrate him if he made a joke like that.

Trowa gave a noncommittal hum.

“We have plans for you,” she added.

Trowa had no idea if that was a threat or a reward.

He hummed again and, he hoped, got the last of Gerhard off of her jacket. He handed it back and turned on the faucet.

Salome shrugged the jacket on.

“Do not disappoint us,” Salome said. She took another sip of his beer and then put it down beside the sink and left.

Trowa scrubbed his hands methodically, rubbing soap back and forth and back and forth and back and forth until his fingers felt numb.

Back out in the common area, Marco and Matvei were shoving at each other and playing the video game together, the palomnik sitting between them and wincing as she was jostled. Anhil was drinking silently, half his attention on the game, half clearly very far away. Two of the other enforcers were watching a soccer game on a computer.

Trowa walked over, watching over their shoulders for a moment, pretending to be interested.

Marco had established a policy, long before Trowa’s arrival, that only phones, tablets and computers that he had personally purchased and networked could be used inside the compound. Each member of the cartel was given a phone - burners that were rotated through frequently - but there were only a few computers for communal use in the hacienda.

Trowa eyed the computer sitting at its charging station, and debated whether or not to bother. He really, really didn’t want to do anything other than go to his room and stare into the darkness until he forgot who he was.

But he had a job to do.

With a sigh, he reached for the computer. He picked it up and tucked it under his arm.

Anhil caught his eye, and Trowa nodded at him.

“Descansa,” he said to the other man.

“You’re really going to go watch your clown porn tonight?” Anhil teased him with a grimace.

Trowa smirked back at him.

“Of course I am.”

Anhil shuddered, and one of the enforcers watching the soccer game muttered something in Spanish about Trowa being insane.

On another night, a night when he hadn’t just picked Gerhard’s brains off of Salome’s jacket, Trowa would have responded in kind.

Tonight, he thought the words were entirely too honest.

He retreated instead. His room, located on the second floor of the hacienda, was narrow, and had only one window. Trowa walked in, closed and locked his door, and dropped the computer onto his bed.

Stripping out of his clothes usually felt like lifting away a burden, like peeling back a layer of himself and, at least temporarily, discarding it. Tonight, Trowa just felt the cool, humid air hit his skin and envelop him. There was nothing soothing about it.

He laid down on the bed and opened up the computer.

Marco checked the web-cam feeds every once in awhile, often enough to give Trowa shit about things, and he kept track of the browser history with a kind of religious fervor that was as annoying as it was dangerous.

Trowa started to type in a website, and the search engine auto-filled in the rest of the address for him.

With a sigh, Trowa scrolled through the site until he found the newest upload.

Clown Daddy Drives Two Clown Bitches.

He clicked on it.

It hadn’t been Trowa’s idea, and, in fact, he was fairly certain it was some asshole’s idea of a joke. As a joke, it sucked. As the only safe means of communication Trowa had with Preventers, it was serviceable.

He watched the surprisingly limber clowns, in full makeup and distressingly brightly-colored costumes, screw each other with disinterest. It was the background that he cared most about.

The video was filmed inside a clown car. A clown van, more like, judging by the room in the backseat. The van’s upholstery was old, worn and cracking along the seams, and littered with faded stickers. Some of the stickers were clown faces, some were souvenir stickers from cities all over North America, a few had slogans on them.

Trowa’s eyes fixed on one of the stickers, just visible under the quivering thighs of one of the female clowns.

The sticker was a green diamond, with white squares at each point and a tan circle in the middle.

A baseball field.

On each of the plates, stark against the white, was a single black number.

-o-

Part of Trowa had hoped he got the day and time wrong for the meet-up.

But when Trowa walked up to the ‘Will Call’ line at the stadium and gave his name, a ticket was passed over to him.

He bought a beer and a hotdog, slathering the thing with relish and mustard, and then reluctantly went in search of his seat.

It was playoff season, with the home team, the Venados, competing for a chance to go to the Caribbean Cup, and the stadium was packed.

Trowa squeezed down the row of seats, eyes focused on the single empty blue seat near the end of the seemingly endless row.

Only when he had finally made it, when he was seated and had figured out how to balance the beer between his legs while he took a bite of the hotdog, did he even look at the man sitting in the seat to his right.

Zechs Merquise stood out, even with his pathetic attempt at blending in - a blue baseball cap pulled over his blond hair and a short, well-trimmed goatee just barely obscuring his mouth and jaw.

Trowa thought the look was awful, which was a shame, since Zechs really only had aesthetics going for him, in Trowa’s mind.

His first bite of the hotdog resulted in a perfect, squelching rush of mustard and relish all over his hands.

Zechs grimaced, and even looked a little nauseated.

Trowa smirked at him and took another bite, not bothering to wipe his mouth or his hands.

“You’re depraved,” Zechs muttered.

Trowa snorted, and then instantly regretted it as the mustard burned his nose.

Zechs looked away from him, towards the field, and he glared at the game.

“We’re moving up the timetable,” Zechs muttered.

Trowa noisily licked his fingers.

“How much?”

“You’ve got two weeks to prepare for the insertion.”

Trowa was sure Zechs had misspoke.

“Two months?” That was insane, but not as impossible as the very concept of two weeks.

“No,” Zechs growled, and flung a napkin at Trowa. “No, two weeks. We need this taken care of before the new legislation goes to the parliament floor for a vote.”

“Two weeks isn’t possible,” Trowa growled, leaning over closer to Zechs. “This op was scheduled to take two years minimum. There’s no fucking way I can set things up for another agent to be inserted in two weeks.”

“You have two weeks. You’re a Gundam pilot.” Zechs spared Trowa a cold, lingering glare. “Or, at least, you were. Impossible is what you do, isn’t it?”

Trowa wanted nothing more than to shove the remainder of his hotdog into Zechs’s face. Actually, he wanted to punch Zechs. Maybe throw him down the concrete aisle of stairs.

“Which agent?” Trowa asked.

“Does it matter?” Zechs challenged.

Trowa glared at him. Of course it mattered. Zechs knew it did.

The other man rolled his eyes.

“Don’t worry. No one is going to break up your little buddy club.”

The news didn’t make Trowa relax, but it didn’t make him want to fling himself from the nearest, tallest building either.

Ever since Wufei had been pulled off undercover ops permanently after a spectacular crash and burn on his first op that had nearly led to an international incident, the ‘buddy club’ as Zechs so condescendingly put it consisted of Trowa, Duo and Heero.

Duo had been scheduled for another op, something long-term, dealing with a smuggling ring on L5, even before Trowa left for this op.

Which meant it was going to be Heero.

Heero wasn’t Wufei when it came to undercover work, but he wasn’t Duo.

Then again, he wasn’t Duo.

Trowa swallowed hard, and he nodded.

“Alright.”

Zechs arched an eyebrow at him.

“‘Alright?’” he repeated derisively.

“I’ll set it up.”

“Of course you will. That’s your job.”

Trowa wondered how long it would take Salome to rip Zechs apart. Wondered just what bits of Zechs he would have to clean off of her clothes.

Zechs stayed for another half an hour, ignoring Trowa completely, and Trowa had lost his appetite as well as any interest in further antagonizing Zechs with the messy hotdog. Instead, he shoved it under his seat and nursed his beer, and tried to figure out how the fuck he was going to get himself and Heero out of this alive.

At least, he thought furiously, it was Heero. Heero was shit with duplicity, but he could pass as a silent, antisocial hacker who could replace Marco. Marco, who Trowa had slowly been working to set-up. Marco, Salome’s cousin. Marco, who Trowa had two weeks to bring down.

The plan, all along, had been to create enough flags in the security system to make Salome and Alessandra doubt Marco, and then plant several million dollars in his bank account, funneled from a Snakehead account on L3.

But the plan was supposed to have months of prep time, and Trowa was supposed to have months to convince Salome and Alessandra to accept his candidate as a replacement.

Now, Trowa had two weeks to engineer Marco’s downfall and convince everyone that they needed to hire one of Howard’s Sweeper hackers.

And, of course, Trowa had to figure out how the fuck to keep Heero shielded from the worst of the cartel shit. Marco was fairly insulated - Salome looked out for him, and besides, the only time Marco had been on-hand for any kind of violence, he had puked all over himself, and Alessandra had laughed at him for weeks afterwards.

Trowa doubted that Heero would get that sort of treatment. He would be tested. He would be scrutinized. He would see the hell that Trowa had been living in for nearly a year. And he would see the monster that Trowa had become.

When Zechs left, shoving past Trowa and the rest of their row rudely, Trowa realized just how alone, just how truly fucked he was.

He felt entirely confident that he would never be free of this nightmare, would never see Duo again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:
> 
> Palomniks: Russian for pilgrims  
> Tigryenok: Russian for tiger  
> Kotyenok: Russian for kitten  
> moy medved: Russian for my bear  
> Hermano: Spanish for brother. Kind of like ‘bro’  
> La Mujer: Spanish for boss lady  
> No tiene dos dedos de frente: Spanish insult - ‘he doesn’t have two fingers of forehead.’ Basically, he’s dumb.  
> Manito: Spanish, short for hermanito: little brother  
> Descansa: Spanish for rest well


	4. The Man Comes Around

_ And I looked, and behold a pale horse _

_ And his name that sat on him was Death,  _

_ and hell followed with him. _

\- Johnny Cash

* * *

 

Duo was in Howard’s office when the call from Sinaloa came in, due to absolute, sheer coincidence.

__

He’d known, of course, that the call was coming.  Had expected it. Had told Howard to expect it, when he’d turned up on his ship like a bad penny, asking for his help with yet another job, asking him to put his neck out and stake his reputation and help Duo again, like he’d done during the war, had done for years since.

__

Howard had just shaken his head, peering at him over his sunglasses.

__

“Gonna get yourself killed one of these days, kid.  Especially playing in the sandbox with the likes of  _ her _ .”

__

But he’d let Duo in, had given him the usual bunk, the usual jobs, and the usual courtesy.  

__

There was no love lost between Mike Howard and Alessandra Vasiliev.  It wasn’t common knowledge, exactly, but Howard avoided dealing with her if he could, and since they didn’t have many overlapping ventures, it wasn’t usually an issue.  He’d avoided her predecessor as well, for the most part.

__

But now Duo was asking him to make himself available to her, and he would do it, strictly for love of Duo.  

__

And Trowa.

__

But Duo wasn’t ready to contemplate that just yet.

__

He was in Howard’s office upgrading the security protecting his electronic network when the vidphone rang.  Instinctively, Duo moved himself and his laptop - custom and battered and Frankensteined together to Duo’s exact specifications - to an unseen corner of the room, still mostly focused on his project.

__

Until he heard the crisp, dulcet tones of a barely-there Russian accent.

__

His head snapped up in attention, but Howard didn’t even cut his eyes in Duo’s direction.

__

The call was even a bit earlier than he’d anticipated.

__

Certainly, Zechs had given Trowa a two-week timeframe, but Duo knew that even in the best of circumstances, manipulating the players this deep in the long game was nothing at all like moving chess pieces, that they required coaxing and soothing and sideways problem-solving, and he’d frankly expected to hang around Howard’s waiting long after the deadline.

__

It had only been 9 days.

__

Duo was begrudgingly impressed.

__

“Mr. Howard,” she greeted, and Duo could almost hear the smirk on her face.  

__

“Good afternoon,” Howard responded, and Duo was impressed at how fast the man had done the time change calculation in his head.  “How can I be of assistance to Sinaloa,  _ Gospozha _ Vasiliev?”

__

It took all of Duo’s self-control not to snort.  He went back to his electronic tinkering, not wanting to be anything of a distraction to the other man.  Howard was an expert negotiator, had been running the Sweeper group for years before Duo had even come along, and he didn’t need Duo’s help or his commentary to do it now.  He knew what they were after, and he knew how to make it work. Duo just had to stay out of his way.

__

“I find myself in need of replacement phones.”  There was a pause. “It seems that  _ la policia _ -” the word came out derisively, “-have discovered how to trace our tracking system.  We would like some that are… significantly more difficult to manipulate.”

__

Howard made a considering noise.  “How many?”

__

The cartel used smartphones to communicate with and track their victims.  Handlers were assigned a fair number of phones and workers, and the girls (or, less often, boys) were sent out with a smartphone while on jobs.  They served multiple purposes - the phones could be used to track the merchandise and make sure they weren’t anywhere they weren’t supposed to be, like a police station, but apps also made it easy to set up meetings, locations, and exchange payment.  Cash was old school, and no one used it anymore. The workers could keep it, squirrel it away, say they’d been underpaid or not paid at all, stealing from the Cartel and funding their own escape.

__

“Five hundred, to start with.  If they meet our needs, you can expect a request for more.”

__

Howard shrugged.  It was small potatoes for him, but keeping the head of a large, violent organization happy with him and his work was always to his advantage, and they both knew it.

__

Duo suspected if he hadn’t been asking for Howard’s help, he’d have declined the job anyway.

__

“How soon do you need them?”

__

Howard’s tech guys could crack and reconfigure a cellphone in minutes.  

__

“At your leisure, Mr. Howard.  We are not so vulnerable as to be undermined by cellphones.  They are simply convenient.”

__

Duo smirked again.  He doubted that was the case.  Still. It didn’t do to show any weaknesses to outsiders.     
  


It often didn’t do to show weakness to insiders.  He’d read what Vasiliev had done to the previous Cartel leader.

__

And what Salome had done to his remaining supporters.

__

Duo listened with half an ear as they negotiated pricing, Howard reassuring her that he could easily accommodate her needs by the time the week was out, if she were willing to pay a bit more for the rush.

__

She was.

__

Duo let out a silent sigh of relief.

__

“I think we can come to a mutually beneficial arrangement,  _ señora _ , if there’s nothing else?”

__

There was another, pregnant pause.  “I suppose, while the opportunity is available to me, it would behoove me to ask you for a recommendation.”

__

“Oh?”

__

Tense with anticipation, Duo gave up all pretense of fiddling with the computer, staring blankly at the wall ahead of him, careful not to draw Howard’s attention.  It wouldn’t behoove  _ them _ to let Alessandra Vasiliev know that someone else was in the room, listening to their conversation.

__

“There is an employment opportunity that has recently become available within our ranks.”  Another moment of silence, and Duo pictured the calculating look on her face. “We find ourselves in need of an electronic security expert.  Our last candidate was… lacking.”

__

Howard looked at her in mock surprise.  Duo had told him exactly what to expect Sinaloa to request, and this was it.

__

“I wouldn’t expect someone of your position to put up with a less than ideal employee for long.”

__

“Yes, well.  It has been resolved.”  The way she said  _ resolved _ put Duo in mind of truck batteries and waterboarding.  “I was given to understand that your technicians are excellent.”

__

They were, because Howard expected them to be, and because one of Duo’s tasks, when he was hanging around on jobs, was to make sure they stayed that way.

__

In front of the vidphone, Howard grinned.

__

The negotiations after that were somewhat different, Howard leading Vasiliev around to what he wanted to offer her, subtle and roundabout, asking her what sort of security she needed done, if it were temporary or permanent, ensuring that, in the end, he only had one viable candidate.

__

Duo.

__

“Well, I’ve got a guy here, real good.  I think he’ll suit you. Gets seasick like you wouldn’t believe - he’d probably be happy to come give your beachside resort a look, see what you’ve got to offer.  He’s a little rough around the edges, but he knows his way around a mainframe. I can have him deliver your new toys, and you can see what you think?”

__

“Yes, send him.  We will see how well he suits us.”

__

His relief was so intense, Duo felt lightheaded with it.

__

He was going to get to Trowa, and god help every fucker that got in his way.

__

*

__

Duo was lounging on a surprisingly comfortable white leather chaise in the front room of the  _ hacienda _ when Alessandra Vasiliev walked in with her entourage. 

__

Their stunned surprise gave him plenty of opportunity to observe them at will, and his gaze skipped over them quickly, cataloging impressions. Vasiliev was dressed in a flowing, grey silk dress, looking for all the world like she belonged in a cabana at one of her high-end resorts, except for the cruel edge to her smile and the look in her eyes. To her right was Salome, in leather and fishnets, and the contrast was jarring. There were Goons 1 and 2, and Duo gave them barely a glance, just noting the sure way they held themselves, the aborted motions they made that indicated they were armed, and dismissed them just as quickly.  He recognized the first one from the briefing - Anhil. Vasiliev’s favorite muscle.

__

And then Trowa. 

__

Duo drank him in, as much as he was able, greedy eyes taking in every detail. 

__

He looked awful. 

__

Well, physically, he looked good. Great. Trowa always looked amazing. 

__

But his eyes were flat and dead, his face impassive. 

__

Duo knew the look. Recognized it. 

__

Hated it. 

__

“What the fuck are  _ you  _ doing here?”

__

Duo smirked at him. Trowa always did know how to make an entrance. 

__

“Nice to see you too, asshole.” He stood languidly and stretched. “Howard sends his regards.”

__

Vasiliev watched them, the barest hint of a smirk on her lips. “Howard sent you, hmm? Can you prove it?”

__

“I'm here, aren't I? Your security sucks, by the way.” He eyeballed her pretty boy bodyguards with disdain. He nudged the large shipping crate at his feet.  “I brought your merchandise, as promised.”

__

She seemed to find him vaguely amusing. That was good. It was always better to be entertaining in addition to being useful.  It kept him alive longer, usually.

__

“Search him,” she murmured to Goon 2. 

__

He only made it a few steps before a razor-sharp blade was embedded in the floor between his feet. He froze. 

__

“Yeah… put your hands on me, and you'll be learning to jerk off with your elbows.” 

__

He turned back to Vasiliev, fingering a second blade. “In the interest of full disclosure, I am, in fact, armed and dangerous, and I don't play well with others.”

__

“Ah, but  _ lisichka _ , surely you understand our caution. You could be wearing a wire - you could be anyone.  Naturally, we need to be reassured.”

__

Duo stared her down just for a moment, long enough to make it clear the acquiescence was his choice, his concession.  Then he jerked his chin towards Trowa. 

__

“I’ll let him pat me down.”

__

“I take it you two know each other.  Are you friends?” She made the words sound obscene in a way that caused Duo’s stomach to churn unpleasantly.

__

“No.”  The word was flat, final when Trowa answered, though Duo wasn’t entirely sure if he was answering her question or responding to Duo’s demand.

__

Duo shrugged, gave that ‘aw shucks’ look that came so naturally to him. The one that said he was harmlessly fun, easygoing and relaxed, when he was in fact none of those; never was, but especially not in enemy territory. “Yeah, we know each other.  Piloted together, you could say. Isn’t that right, 03?” Trowa flinched. “But no, we’re not what I’d call  _ friends _ .”

__

They’d been coworkers, and partners, and fuckbuddies, and lovers, but they weren’t friends.

__

Alessandra was looking at him more speculatively now, eyes glittering in anticipation.  She nodded towards Trowa.

__

Obviously frustrated, Trowa stalked over to Duo, jerking to a stop in front of him and refusing to meet his eyes.  

__

Up close, he looked even worse, haunted and gaunt, as he checked Duo over roughly, no effort made for his comfort.

__

He was just as pissed as Duo had expected him to be.  He very carefully didn’t sigh in exasperation. Duo didn’t really give a shit if Trowa was  _ happy _ to see him, but he was going to drag the other man out of this clusterfuck alive, kicking and screaming if need be, and there wasn’t a damn thing Trowa could do about it.

__

So he simply stood there, passively, his body swaying slightly from the force behind Trowa’s grip, staring at Alessandra, who looked mildly bored and a lot dangerous.  And Salome, whose face reflected a disconcerting sort of excitement over all the banked violence in the room.

__

Duo was willing to play along, at least for now, submitting to this ridiculous humiliation, this effort to show him who was boss.  As if it weren’t obvious that Alessandra held all the cards. As though he needed to be reminded who was going to order their deaths if they fucked even one thing up. Likely their drawn-out, excruciatingly painful deaths. He remained complacent, the picture of serene boredom. 

__

Until Trowa got a little too frisky, and not a bit gentle, in his search, and Duo figured that, even just for appearances’ sake, he couldn’t let that slide. 

__

Trowa took the knee to his chest gracelessly, falling back onto his heels, giving Duo a dark look even as he swept a leg out to trip him up, sending Duo tumbling to the floor beside him.

__

It was like a flipped switch, and then they were on each other, punches thrown and elbows checked. Trowa was obviously furious and Duo darkly determined, neither of them willing to cede ground. Belatedly, laughter broke through the haze of fury and punishment, leaving them sprawled, bloodied and panting, looking up at Vasiliev.

__

“Welcome to Sinaloa.” She paused, waiting on Duo to introduce himself.

__

“Duo,” he reached up to wipe the blood from his nose, “Duo Maxwell.”

__

She hummed thoughtfully.  “Welcome, Pilot 02. When Howard says he will send the best, he does not exaggerate.  You reputation precedes you.”

__

He grinned fiercely as he stood, ignoring Trowa as the taller man climbed to his feet beside him.

__

*

__

It didn't take long for Duo to fall into a routine at the compound. Well, what passed for routine there, where the hacienda was sleepy and sluggish between shipments, and then a buzzing nest of hornets whenever anything important happened. 

__

There was an initial settling in period where Duo dumped all of Marco’s handiwork in a loud fit of disgust, replacing it with his own system, easing up on the restrictions Marco had placed on the computer usage, preferring instead to monitor it all from his position at the top of the network. 

__

In one fell swoop, he drew attention, improved the process, and engendered himself to the others, all by just doing more than a half-assed job. 

__

Well, except for Matvei. It was hard to get in the good graces of a man you'd once hurled a knife at. 

__

But overall, it was a tactic he excelled at. 

__

Trowa blended. That was his specialty. He fell in with the group and chameleoned his way into positions of importance but not authority, then disappeared when the shit hit the fan. 

__

Duo was all showmanship and sleight of hand, distracting the crowd while he performed the subterfuge. Or everything blew up. Literally. 

__

They were an excellent team. 

__

Or should have been, but Trowa was encased in ice, ignoring him in a rage of dark fury and bruised hurt. 

__

That was fine. He was in Duo's sight and within touching range, and that was good enough. 

__

For now. 

__

Once the networking had been sorted - all under the watchful eye of Salome, who knew a bit more about what she was looking at than she liked to let on - it was time for some reconnaissance. 

__

He started working out in the mornings, on whatever part of the grounds appealed to him that day. 

__

It was a trick he'd picked up from Heero, of all people, though Duo had adapted the habit to his purposes. 

__

Heero actually did it to keep in shape, for example, whereas Duo used it as a spying tactic. 

__

It was amazing, really, how people ignored a man doing an intense exercise routine as though he didn't have eyes and ears. It was like being part of the landscape. Duo had learned any number of things just from being in the right place at the right time while doing sit-ups. Regular runs around the grounds revealed holes in the perimeter, patrol schedules and guard rotations.

__

And not one single person seemed to think anything about Duo’s near-religious devotion to physical exertion.  It was almost too easy.

__

Not that Duo was stupid enough to think anything about this assignment was easy.  

__

There was a recent stain on the floor of a certain shed at the edges of the property that told him everything he needed to know about how things went down in Sinaloa. 

__

He was sitting at his desk, reviewing data packets from the night before, when Salome appeared, as she often did, with no warning, like a particularly venomous snake perched on the edge of his workstation.  Today, she was garbed in a leather mini skirt, gold coin belt, and a mesh shirt with  _ nothing _ underneath.

__

If Duo were the type to be interested, she’d have made a very attractive picture.  Except for the cold look in her eyes, the one that said she was thinking of your especially-painful death.

__

Duo took off his headphones and looked up at her, eyebrow raised in query.  He hadn’t quite figured out his play with her. Was beginning to suspect there might not be one.

__

“What are you doing,  _ lisichka _ ?”

__

He gestured at the screen.  “Data in, data out. I gave everyone a network ID, so now I see what they do with their time.  Most of it’s shitty porn.” To his right, one of the other enforcers snorted to himself, and across the room, Trowa’s shoulders stiffened.

__

Duo had already heard the rumors of what he apparently liked to get up to in his spare time, mentioned to him in snickering whispers, Duo rolling his eyes the entire time.  He was more than familiar with Trowa’s preferences, and he recognized some dumbshit Preventers’ idea of a fucking joke.

__

“For example,” Duo drawled, “user TM167 - that’s Tomas, by the way -” the man in question flinched from his position on the couch, one of the ever-present  _ palomniks _ lounging with her feet in his lap, “has a near-devout dedication to ‘Backdoor Babes’, which has already subjected my firewall to no less than four poorly-designed malware viruses.”  He paused. “You should probably add subscriptions to their benefit packages.”

__

Salome snorted in what passed for amusement from her.  “Alessandra wants to see you.”

__

Duo stood to follow her, ignoring the eyes on his back, certain that at least one of the stares boring into him was Trowa’s.

__

Alessandra’s office was sumptuous and imposing, and exactly what he’d expected from a woman of her reputation.  She was seated behind an enormous desk, reclining back in her chair and watching him when he walked in.

__

Always, there was the contrast between her and Salome, dark to light, businesswoman to, well, whatever Salome was, Alessandra wearing a sleeveless white blouse so thin it was nearly sheer, tucked into wide-legged trousers.  The look of a powerful CEO, compared to Salome’s hedonism. Duo wondered how much of it was for effect.

__

Probably all of it.

__

He stood, waiting for an invitation to sit.

__

Duo had learned that lesson the hard way, once, on another op.  Better to stand and wait.

__

Salome draped herself over one of the plush, leather chairs next to him.

__

“Ah,  _ lisichka,  _ how are you enjoying our accommodations?”

__

“Better than the bunk on the Sweeper ship I’d been hugging the toilet in,” he answered easily.  They’d assigned him a room on the second floor, a few doors down from Trowa, with a single bed and a small table.  He couldn't quite see the coast from his window, but he could hear it, if he left the window open at night. Which he did, because the heat was oppressive.

__

Alessandra’s lips quirked, minutely, at his response.  “And the work? Is it to your liking?”

__

Duo shrugged.  “It’s fine, now that I got the network straightened out.  Nothin’ out of the ordinary.”

__

Other than the data worm he’d buried at the very bottom of the code, covered in security protocols and data packets and network IDs and a sophisticated rootkit, which was collecting every shred of information in the system for later delivery to Preventers.  Even if Duo and Trowa died on this op - and Duo ruthlessly quashed that thought - Preventers would be able to obtain the information. If Duo wasn’t around to input the routine coding, the virus was setup to automatically deliver whatever data it had collected to Preventers for review.

__

He was rather proud of it.

__

“I have a… task for you.”  Her dark eyes were challenging as she gazed at him over the expansive glass desktop.

__

Duo had already been tested several times since he’d arrived at the compound.  Salome hovering over his shoulder as he established the network and programmed the security features had been the mildest of them.

__

He’d been questioned and scrutinized, and he’d had no less than three fist fights - though that could have been due to his reputation rather than any sort of subterfuge. One of the younger enforcers had even tried to hack the system, which Duo had found endlessly amusing.

__

But this, whatever it was, was the final goal post - the thing that had Alessandra deciding whether he was worth the trouble, or sending him packing back to Howard’s ship.

__

Or worse.

__

He was rather attached to his digits, and he had no doubt she’d relieve him of them if he screwed up.

__

Duo forced himself to look eager. This was his opportunity, his chance to make inroads with Alessandra. His time to shine.  Any idiot could set up a relatively secure network. 

__

_ Marco _ had, after all.

__

Not that it had ended well for him.  Duo’d heard _ those _ stories as well.  That he’d dropped the ball, allowed some sort of malware into the system, that another cartel had gotten a peek at the delivery schedule and fucked the intake. A leak that had allowed the L3 police to raid the Cartel’s cargo shuttle, pulling 167 colonials and hundreds of thousands of dollars in drugs off the ship.

__

Alessandra had not been pleased.

__

Then, they’d reviewed the system and found his emergency fund squirreled away, along with a dozen other all-too-convenient holes in the system that had allowed rival gangs easy access to Sinaloa’s money, schedule, and electronic network.

__

Duo wondered how much of it had been manufactured by Trowa.

__

Marco’s death had been bad by even Cartel standards. 

__

“You are familiar with the Snakeheads?”

__

Duo nodded.  They were a rapidly-expanding rival organization, originally based out of L5 but looking to gain territory, and Sinaloa had had a few run-ins with them already, before the clusterfuck on L3.

__

“I owe them recompense for the insult they have issued.  There are many means of destroying such arrogance, but I plan to repay them in kind for their audacity.”

__

“What do you need me to do?”

__

*

__

Duo stopped by the kitchen on his way back to the main room, grabbing snacks he’d insisted on purchasing soon after his arrival.

__

He’d spent all of one week watching Trowa ghost around the place, avoiding him and unwilling to meet his eyes before he’d had enough of that.  Duo knew all of the other man’s weaknesses, and if Trowa thought he was going to get off lightly, pretending Duo didn’t exist and ducking under his radar, he was sadly mistaken.

__

“Hey,  _ payaso _ ,” Trowa glared up at him from the corner of the room he’d been sequestering himself in, obviously unwilling to leave until Duo came back, and simultaneously irritated about it.

__

Duo flung the object in his hands at him, hard enough to hurt if Trowa hadn't reached up and reflexively caught it before it hit him.

__

Sitting down at his desk, Duo pretended not to notice Trowa staring down at the perfect, shiny honeycrisp apple in his hands.

__

You couldn’t hide from someone who knew everything about you.

__

He kept pretending not to notice as Trowa got up to follow Anhil out of the room, leaving to do whatever it was the two of them did all day, apple in hand, his face a thundercloud.  

__

Trowa didn’t come back for the rest of the day, not even when he usually returned to the  _ hacienda _ for dinner and a beer, and no one else spoke to Duo either, clearly concerned he’d been called to task and unwilling to be associated with him for fear of going down with the ship.

__

Which suited Duo just fine.

__

Later, much later, after the sun had gone down and the oppressive heat of the day had eased, Duo went out to the pool deck, looking to escape the equally-stifling atmosphere inside the house.  He’d changed into his shorts and snagged a towel on his way out, thinking that a cool glide through the water was probably exactly what he needed to ease the tension in his shoulders.

__

He wasn’t expecting to find Trowa doing exactly the same thing, approaching the deck from the other direction, from somewhere on the dark edges of the property. He equally wasn’t expecting for them to stumble onto Alessandra and Salome enjoying the pool more… intimately.

__

Duo didn’t even notice them at first, he was so distracted by Trowa’s appearance in the darkness, the two of them glaring at each other from where they’d come to a halt on opposite sides of the sundeck.

__

Trowa’s eyes trailed over him belligerently, and it was everything Duo could do not to fire off some smart-assed remark, instead standing placidly, letting him look.

__

Maybe he was as starved for sight of Duo as Duo had been for a glance of him.

__

“There’s literally nowhere I can go to get away from you, is there?”

__

Or maybe he was just an asshole.

__

“ _ Payaso _ , I’ve been doing my  _ job _ all day, in the house, where I always am. I’m not that hard to hide from.”

__

Trowa’s eyes tightened at the nickname, one Duo had been using for years, a reminder of their history together, one that he could use that would be meaningless to the others.  Or maybe he was flinching at Duo’s jab, at his clear implication that Trowa would be hiding from  _ him _ .

__

Either way, Duo was damned if he was going to let Trowa forget what he was here for.  

__

The taller man sneered at him.  “I’m not hiding,  _ lisichka _ .” The word was bitterly sarcastic, rolling from Trowa’s lips, his accent perfect. “I just don’t like you.”

__

“Yeah, well, feeling’s mutual, pal,” Duo muttered, ignoring the sharp bite of Trowa’s words.  The other man had never pulled any of his punches, verbal or otherwise, and Duo didn’t expect him to start now, when he was angry and hurting and miserable.

__

To his right came a deep sigh of disappointment, and both he and Trowa whirled reflexively to find their employer leaning on the edge of the pool, Salome tucked up against her side.

__

“If I wanted to listen to a lovers’ spat, I would have turned on  _ Telemundo _ , no?”

__

Disentangling herself from Salome, she glided over to the pool stairs and began climbing up, which was when Duo realized she was naked, sheets of water falling down her body with every step she took.

__

“ _ Lisichka _ , a towel, if you please.”  

__

Wordlessly, Duo held his out, carefully keeping his eyes above her collarbone.  Unsurprisingly, she seemed to find his discomfort amusing. Salome followed her out of the water, strolling across the deck with a complete lack of concern for her nakedness, and Duo didn’t look at her at  _ all _ .  

__

“Work out your differences, gentlemen.  Or we will work them out for you.”

__

The two of them disappeared into the private entrance that led straight into the  _ hacienda’s _ large master bedroom.

__

Well.  That explained a lot.

__

When Duo turned back around, Trowa was gone.

__

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:
> 
> Gospozha - 'Ms.' (Russian)  
> la policia - 'the police' (Spanish)  
> señora - 'ma'am' or 'Mrs.' (Spanish)  
> hacienda - 'house' (Spanish)  
> lisichka - 'little fox' (Russian)  
> palomniks - 'pilgirms' (Russian) Salome's nickname for the colonials she keeps around the compound  
> payaso - 'clown' (Spanish)  
> Telemundo - a reference to Spanish soap operas, noted for their drama
> 
> Other notes:
> 
> The descriptions regarding the use of cellphones and money transfer apps in human trafficking and forced sex work are accurate to current practices, unfortunately. 
> 
> Sinaloa Cartel is a real cartel, run out of the Matzalan area of Mexico, and has been linked to various illegal practices including drug running and human trafficking. We drew inspiration from the source material, but we have expanded and fictionalized it beyond that. 
> 
> Everything regarding computer networks, spyware, viruses, etc etc is all made up and purposefully vague because we don't know what the fuck we're talking about beyond what some basic googling could drum up, so if you see any egregious errors, drop us a line.


	5. Riders in the Sky

_Their faces gaunt, their eyes were blurred, their shirts all soaked with sweat_  
_He's riding hard to catch that herd, but he ain't caught 'em yet_  
 _'Cause they've got to ride forever on that range up in the sky_  
 _On horses snorting fire_  
 _As they ride on hear their cry_

_  
-Johnny Cash_

 

* * *

The next shipment arrived and was processed without incident.

It was an all-too-rare occurrence these days, and Trowa kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waited for local law enforcement to get brave or stupid and stumble upon them. Waited for the colonials to riot. Waited for Gerhard’s replacement, Eduardo, to make a mistake.

But nothing happened, and all of the tension and anxiety Trowa had battled for the day was left churning in his stomach.

When they got back to the compound that night, everyone was in high spirits. Trowa wasn’t the only one who had anticipated things going wrong, and the rest of the crew reacted to the successful delivery by partying.

The shuttle pilot and his crew had hung around, going back to the hacienda to pick up their payment and staying on, at Alessandra’s invitation. It was the usual practice - it helped Alessandra build relationships with pilots willing to risk ESUN and colonial patrols to carry illegal cargo. And it helped her show off her magnanimity.

Trowa could still remember the first of Alessandra’s parties after he joined Sinaloa.

It had been three weeks after he started, and it hadn’t been thrown because of anything as mundane as a successful shipment. Trowa had fed Anhil intel on one of the enforcers, a holdover from before Alessandra had taken over, who had been biding his time and waiting to avenge his previous employer. Preventers had identified him as an exploitable resource, and Trowa had been rewarded for uncovering his duplicity, and been allowed to be the one who finally put a bullet in his head after Salome finished with him.

The party that night had been blessedly mind-numbing. There had been enough drugs on hand to start a public health crisis in a small town, and Trowa had availed himself to a cocktail of drugs and booze that had let him float through the celebration in a distorted haze.

It wasn’t until later, when Anhil pulled him aside and introduced Trowa to his cousins, that Trowa started to feel nauseous.

It wasn’t until the next morning, when Trowa woke up hungover and desperate to piss and had to crawl over the naked men in his bed, that he let himself start to wonder just how far he would have to go in order to make this op work.

This party was far different from that one - Alessandra and Salome had stayed, for that one, conspicuous in their joy over the death of a traitor.

For this party, Alessandra told Anhil to make sure moi deiti didn’t burn down the hacienda, and then she and Salome left to spend the night at one of her coastal resorts.

Trowa had known then that things would be raucous.

Tension had been building for weeks, ever since Branson’s execution, and even before that, when the Snakeheads had started to infringe on the Sinaloa territory on L3. The crew had been restless and on-edge since then, and this felt like the first time something had gone right in nearly forever.

Of course, Trowa had been working from the start to fracture the confidence of the Sinaloa cartel, and while things were, in a general sense, going according to plan - the plan meant things had to go to shit.

Which meant more violence, and more victims.

It had been a difficult balancing act before, when Trowa had been forced to work just as hard to keep himself emotionally removed from the brutality around him as he had to actually do his part in it.

But now Duo was here.

Had been here for nearly a month. And he knew.

He hadn’t seen much of it, certainly hadn’t had any part in it outside of the tussles he himself had been involved in with the crew, and Trowa couldn’t decide if that made things better or worse.

Worse, because Trowa was still in this alone. Better, because Trowa had only ever wanted to keep Duo’s hands clean in the first place.

Worse, because Duo was there. His indigo eyes saw everything, and Trowa couldn’t even stand to be in his own skin when Duo looked at him.

Worse, because when Matvei got his hands on the stereo and starting blasting music beside the pool, Duo abandoned his computer network inside and came to investigate.

Alessandra had made arrangements, before she departed with Salome, and a slew of beautiful men and women lounged by the pool - local additions to supplement the handful of palomniks, ready to pleasure the crew and share the bounty of liquor and drugs that were spread out like a buffet.

Trowa, standing on the fringe of things, watching as the violent men around him danced and snorted cocaine and swam naked, met Duo’s eyes for a long, tense moment.

It was impossible to look at Duo, to have Duo look at him, and not feel all of the things Trowa had been trying so damn hard to forget.

They stood there, staring at each other across the gulf between them, for too long. Long enough that Trowa was sure they were attracting attention, long enough for Trowa to see Duo’s eyes shift from angry to cautious, and long enough for the knot in Trowa’s gut to coil tighter, almost constricting him, long enough-

Matvei walked by and shoved Duo into the pool.

Trowa watched as Duo’s arms wildly flung out, as his body hit the water at an awkward angle and a splash of water arced upwards and out, dousing Anhil and his coterie of admirers.

Duo went under and then came up spluttering, rage in his eyes, hair and clothes plastered against his skin.

He swam for the nearest ladder, strokes precise and furious, and his gaze never wavering from the chuckling Matvei.

He pulled himself up, water dripping from his body, looking like some kind of avenging sea creature.

Trowa realized that, aside from the too-loud music, the party was utterly silent, and everyone’s attention was focused on the two men.

This was a fight that had been brewing since Duo’s arrival, since Duo threw a knife at Matvei, and since he started making casual, pointed comments about Matvei and his internet browsing habits. Duo had half of the cartel members at the compound under his spell, and the other half plotting ways to get revenge. He had always been a polarizing figure - charismatic and charming when he wanted to be, deadly and annoying as fuck when he put his mind to it.

Trowa could see the tension around the pool, the shifting bodies as everyone wondered what would happen next.

Duo was on the top rung of the ladder, and Trowa could see his entire body, clothes molded against his firm, lean frame, and he felt a pang of longing so intense it stole his breath away.

And then he stepped forward and placed his right palm against Duo’s chest.

Duo met his gaze, brows drawing together in confusion.

“You’ve been working too hard, lisichka,” he said. “Cool off.”

  
And he shoved him back into the water, the shock of the action catching Duo off-guard, and the water making his grip on the ladder weak.

Matvei howled with laughter and clapped Trowa on the back.

Duo looked at the pair of them, a sneer twisting his lips. He pulled off his soaked shirt, balled it up, and threw it at Trowa.

Trowa sidestepped the projectile neatly, and it landed on the wooden deck with a wet thunk.

Duo’s Sweeper tattoo, the dark navy outline of an old Terran plane fuselage, stood out, inked just above his left pectoral, and the rest of the tattoos and scars on his chest, shoulders and upper arms were visible.

“Come join me, payaso,” Duo taunted, the sneer on his face somewhere between sultry and condescending. Trowa wondered if he had picked that particular look up from Zechs.

All eyes were still on them, and most of the enforcers were looking at Duo with new eyes.

The Sweeper tattoo had to be earned - Trowa, for all that he had done work with Howard’s group in the decade since the war, hadn’t earned his yet. Duo had had his for years, and it was a symbol, among spacers, among all of those who lived on the fringe of society, of who Duo was and what he had done.

Trowa could see that even Matvei looked a little awed by the tattoo, and he licked his lips nervously as he glanced between Duo and Trowa.

Rolling his shoulders in a loose shrug, Trowa let his gaze assess Duo for a long moment.

“No.”

And then he looked away, over to where Anhil sat with a group of nubile young men. Trowa picked one out, smirking slightly at the dark-haired man, and jerked his head.

The man rose to his feet and came over to Trowa, who put his arm around his shoulders and steered him towards the bar area.

Everyone settled back into the swing of the party surprisingly easily, and as Trowa lounged by the pool, slowly and steadily drinking himself out of sobriety, his companion sitting on his lap and admiring Trowa’s muscles and face and chest and whispered teases, he tried to keep an eye on Duo.

And Duo was clearly keeping an eye on him.

Even as the other man swam, even after he finally got out of the pool and joined some of the crew in a game of darts, Duo’s gaze kept finding his.

Trowa ran his fingers down the spine of the man in his lap, looking at Duo the entire time, and the darkness of the night around them and the distance between them made it impossible for Trowa to know what Duo was thinking.

Eventually, the man on his lap shifted, bracketing Trowa’s body with his thighs and leaning closer to brush his lips over Trowa’s jaw and then his ear.

“Take me back to your room, chapo,” he breathed.

Trowa shifted, running his hands over the man’s back and gently pushing him down Trowa’s thighs, away from him.

“Not tonight.”

The man looked disappointed, and then angry.

“Estoy demasiado borracho,” Trowa soothed him. “No sería bueno.”

The man shrugged and smirked, trying to crawl back into Trowa’s lap.

“I’ll do all the work, chapo,” he purred.

Trowa caught the hand that reached for his belt.

“Not tonight,” he repeated, more firmly.

The man scowled at him and shook free. He climbed to his feet and glared down at Trowa for a long moment before stalking off.

Trowa sighed and leaned back against his chair. He took another sip of his drink.

“You and 02 need to work out your problems, hermano.”

Trowa looked up to see Anhil sit down in the chair beside him.

Trowa finished off his drink with a sneer.

“He’s better than Marco,” Anhil said, voice low. “And you two were buddies during the war, si?”

Trowa snorted a derisive laugh.

“I’d be better than Marco. And we weren’t buddies during the war.”

Anhil shrugged.

“You fought on the same side.”

“Only by coincidence,” Trowa muttered. It was, after all, entirely true.

And, of course, there was the fact that there had been times during the war when they were on different sides.

But there was no need to bring that up now - or ever.

It had been Sally who had first suggested that Heero, Duo and Trowa would provide the most benefit to Preventers as themselves - Heero, who had been an assassin and hacker for hire before he saved the world, and now used the latter skills; Duo, an anarchist who had simply been fighting to bring down the Alliance, and who had strong ties to the Sweepers; and Trowa, who had no strong ties to anyone, and had spent his childhood as a mercenary.

And now his adulthood.

The three of them lived openly as themselves - with no cover - and it allowed them to infiltrate shadowy organizations without any kind of elaborate cover stories.

It also meant that when Trowa looked in the mirror, when he wiped blood from his hands, he was looking at himself. There was no cover, no convenient web of lies cushioning him from the reality that his actions were entirely his own.

“And coincidence brought him here. On the same side again.” Anhil shoved at Trowa’s leg. “La mujer likes him. And she likes you. Don’t make her choose between you two, hermano. She doesn’t like it when her favorites can’t play nicely.”

Trowa had seen evidence of that first-hand.

During his first months with the cartel, there had been two enforcers, handsome men who preened under Alessandra’s dark, amused gaze and spent more of their time trying to outdo each other than do their jobs. After one too many brawls, Salome had executed one of them. The other had vanished not long after, with no explanation.

Trowa couldn’t let that happen again.

He forced a sigh.

“You want me to go apologize? Ask him to dance?”

Anhil snorted and shook his head.

“I want you to get your head out of your ass, hermano. I don’t care how much you like your own shit. It’s starting to smell.”

With that, Anhil got up and left Trowa alone.

-o-

Trowa never slept well.

Not before this op, and certainly not during the op.

Sometimes, it was useful - keeping odd hours meant he learned a lot about the habits of those around him - but most of the time, it was just frustrating. He couldn’t remember the last time he had actually felt rested.

That was a lie, he could. He could vividly remember it. But it wasn’t a time or a place or a feeling he could let himself dwell on.

The party had started to lose steam around 2am, most of the crew escorting company back to their rooms or going off alone with more drugs or alcohol.

Duo had hung around for most of it, moving from darts to dancing, alternating his time between teasing the crew and flirting with the beautiful men and women that Alessandra had provided for their amusement.

Trowa spent the rest of the night alone, brooding.

It was after three when Duo finally pulled away from the embrace of a man and woman. The two had been wrapped around Duo for the better part of an hour, touching him, pressing kisses to his skin and muttering things that had all three of them laughing.

Duo’s eyes met Trowa’s again, something between a warning and a challenge in them, but then he made an elaborate show of kissing the man and woman goodnight and walking back into the hacienda alone.

Trowa followed him soon after, pausing beside Duo’s closed door, the desire to reach out and turn the doorknob so intense he felt a little lightheaded.

But he walked to his own room and closed and locked his door. He lay on his bed and stared up at the ceiling, and tried to block out the dying strains of the party, tried to prevent himself from thinking about before, and from thinking about the future and all of the things he still had to do.

It was just after dawn when Trowa gave up attempting to sleep.

He climbed out of bed, changed his clothes, and went down to the kitchen to find something to eat.

Instead, he found Duo, sitting at the island in the kitchen, sipping on a cup of coffee, and eating an apple.

Duo and his damn apples. Duo and his damn obsession with fresh fruit. Duo and his damn obsession with-

“You’re up early,” Trowa said.

Duo shrugged one shoulder negligently, and then took another bite of his apple.

“Felt like running before the sun rose,” he said around the mouthful.

Trowa looked him over more closely, noticing the way Duo’s bangs were pushed behind his ears, the way his shirt clung to his shoulders and back, the shorts he wore that made his thighs entirely too attractive.

He turned away from the sight and poured himself a cup of coffee.

Trowa looked at the bowl of apples on the counter, shiny and new, arranged in the same way Duo arranged them at home when-

He slammed shut those thoughts, those memories.

He made himself a piece of toast.

“Gotta get boring, clenching that stick up your ass so tightly all the time,” Duo drawled.

Trowa locked his jaw against responding to the comment, and resolutely ignored Duo.

Duo snorted in amused derision.

“You like this all the time, or just since I joined up? Nobody else around here acts so fucking constipated all the time.”

The words reminded Trowa of what Anhil had said last night, of the warning that his behavior was noticeable, that his antipathy towards Duo was drawing Salome and Alessandra’s attention.

He released a breath and turned around to look at Duo.

“Enjoy the party last night?” he asked, keeping his voice neutral.

Duo was clearly thrown by the change, and for a moment, he stared at Trowa, mouth open. It was almost comical.

“Oh yeah,” Duo finally answered. “Who doesn’t love a dip in the pool?”

Trowa snorted. He wasn’t going to apologize for that. Duo had been ready to commit murder, and that would have gotten both of them killed.

“You looked like you made some friends,” he said instead.

“Well, I’m a friendly fucking guy,” Duo said before taking another bite of his apple, his tone anything but friendly. “So’r’you, it looked like. Or maybe you just have a thing about boys sitting in your lap.”

Trowa narrowed his eyes at Duo, and the other man rolled his eyes and shrugged.

“Whatever, man,” he muttered.

“La mujer seems to like you,” Trowa said, trying to change the subject.

Duo snorted.

“Even though I haven’t sat in her lap?” He shrugged. “Yeah. She doesn’t want to feed me to the wolves yet.”

“She trusts you,” Trowa murmured.

Duo’s eyes turned sharp, and some of his animosity seemed to vanish.

“Yeah, about as far as she can throw me.”

Trowa smirked at that.

“With Salome’s help, that’s actually pretty far.”

“Yep, right into the nearest ditch, huh?”

The words hit too close to home, and Trowa knew that that was exactly what Duo had been aiming for.

“Stay out of either of their laps and you won’t find yourself getting thrown in one,” Trowa recommended.

Duo’s lips twisted, and he saluted Trowa with his mug.

“Thanks for the advice, payaso.”

Trowa shook his head at the nickname. It had been a taunt years ago when Duo first saddled him with it, but it had become something more for them, over the years, had become a touchstone, had become intimate.

Trowa hated hearing Duo call him that here, in this place, where everything he did pulled him further and further away from where he wanted to be. Who he wanted to be.

“How’s Howard?” Trowa asked, the most innocuous thing he could think of to say.

“Good. Laughing his ass off about the two of us working for the same outfit again.”

“I replaced the table we broke,” Trowa pointed out.

“Yeah, but he’s still got crew who flinch when your name gets mentioned.”

“Good,” Trowa decided.

He buttered his toast, feeling Duo’s eyes on him the entire time.

“He wanted me to pass on his regards,” Duo said. “Told me to keep an eye on you.”

Trowa seriously doubted Howard had said any such thing.

Howard was Duo’s contact, was as close to family as Duo had, and Howard thought of the long-haired man like a son. Trowa, on the other hand, he treated like the delinquent boyfriend who always fucked things up, but who he tolerated for Duo’s sake alone.

Of course, being tolerated by Howard meant a lot - it meant Howard had Trowa’s back, meant he always had a handy cover story, meant he had a way to get extracted, meant he had a place to run to.

But those words… they weren’t Howard’s words. They were Duo’s.

And the expression in Duo’s eyes said that, said all of that and more.

“You’ve got enough to keep your eyes on,” Trowa told him, “and I can look out for myself.”

“What if I like looking at you?” Duo said with a leer.

Trowa gave him a quelling look.

“You like looking at me because you’re demented, lisichka,” Trowa muttered.

“Pot - kettle?” Duo suggested.

His tone was light, teasing, so far from the animosity their previous interactions had been drowning in.

And Trowa - Trowa wanted so badly to reach out and snag the apple from Duo’s hands and place his mouth where Duo’s had been. Wanted to drag him into the shower. Wanted to take him as far away from where they were as it was possible to get.

He wanted to run, and when Duo looked at him like that, full lips curved in a lopsided smirk, it was far too easy for Trowa to imagine doing exactly that.

“You and me aren’t the same, lisichka,” Trowa said. He kept his voice low. “You got hired to do a job - got hired to sit behind a desk and play with your toys. What you do and what are I do are very different. I dig the ditches, don’t I?”

Duo’s eyes narrowed, and he tensed.

“All by yourself, huh?”

Trowa nodded.

“All by myself. You do your job, and I do mine. Just like always. We don’t work together, lisichka, and we aren’t friends.”

Duo finished off his apple, chewing thoughtfully as he considered Trowa’s words.

“But I’m a friendly guy, you’re a friendly guy. We can-”

“Mne nuzhno eto. Ostav’ menya v pokoye.”

Duo’s Russian wasn’t great, but he knew enough, had certainly heard both those phrases from Trowa before, just never paired together.

He swallowed and nodded.

“Alright. Fine. You do your job, and I do mine. That’s the only reason we’re here anyway, isn’t it?”

Duo didn’t give Trowa a chance to respond. He picked up his coffee mug and walked out of the kitchen.

-o-

  
Chilly would be one way to describe the silence between Duo and Trowa over the next two weeks.

Arctic might be more appropriate.

Absolute zero wouldn’t even be an exaggeration, Trowa thought, after sixteen days of Duo’s eyes sliding past him, of Duo’s smirk falling and his mouth snapping closed every time Trowa walked into a room, of Duo ignoring perfect setups for any number of jokes or teases whenever Trowa was within earshot.

It wasn’t what Trowa had expected when he had begged Duo to leave him alone.

He hadn’t wanted this - not this stony facade of indifference. He had simply wanted space, had wanted Duo to stop looking at him with fire in his eyes and tension around his smirk, had wanted Duo to stop treating him like an almost-comrade, to stop being so close and-

And Trowa had surely gotten exactly that. Duo might as well be on Mars, for all the attention he gave Trowa, for all the concern he seemed to have for him.

It wasn’t better.

It was, Trowa realized after just one damn day of the torture, infinitely fucking worse. Because now he wasn’t even himself in Duo’s eyes. He wasn’t even human in Duo’s eyes. He was just another lackey in the Sinaloa cartel, and he wasn’t even worth Duo’s notice.

It made the dark void in Trowa’s gut twist and ache, it made him just that more vicious to himself, left his heart and his mind empty to dwell on all the things he had done and all the things he would still do before-

Before what, though?

What could possibly come after?

The mission was still impossible, even with Duo there. Trowa had no idea what Duo was doing - the initial plan, when this op had still been a multiyear mission, had been to insert a tech specialist who could expose the Sinaloa records, drain their funds, and give the Preventers actionable intel. Trowa’s role had always been to insert himself into the cartel, to work his way to a position of trust and to make a hole for the tech specialist, and to methodically attempt to destroy Sinaloa from within.

But it was like a damn hydra.

He had, not entirely to plan, taken out Branson, and he had been replaced with a more competent accountant. Gerhard had been a trusted enforcer, though not as trusted as Trowa, and Trowa hadn’t had all that much to do with his death. Marco... Trowa hadn’t had as much to do with Marco’s demise as originally planned, but he had been the one to put a bullet in him.

In the months before, Trowa had played a part in the downfall of a handful of lower-level chapos, and had given the Snakeheads openings into the Sinaloa digital network, and had passed along what intel he could to Zechs about the Sinaloa’s shipments.

It wasn’t enough.

It wouldn’t be enough, and Trowa woke up everyday confident that if it wasn’t his last, it was among his last.

And Duo wouldn’t look at him.

Anhil, of course, noticed.

He made comments about it, pointed little barbs about Trowa’s people skills, but he didn’t push the issue until almost three weeks after the party.

A new shipment had come and gone, successfully received and processed, and Trowa had felt yet another layer of his humanity scratched away.

But the cartel was finding it harder and harder to track down competent pilots who didn’t mind running the gamut of ESUN security forces, L3 customs, and Snakehead pirates.

Anhil had a few connections, old war buddies, mercenaries he had fought with during the Eve Wars as a soldier for a dictator in Guatemala who had tried to use the colonial conflict as an attempt to consolidate power, and he wanted to bring them into the cartel.

He had arranged to meet with one of his old camaradas, who knew a pilot and a few soldiers looking for work as enforcers, and he invited Trowa along.

Trowa had expected that. After all, he more or less existed to be Anhil’s right hand.

What he hadn’t expected was for Anhil to pause on their way out of the hacienda and look towards Duo’s computer terminal, mouth drawn into a thoughtful frown.

“No,” Trowa had whispered, knowing instantly what Anhil was thinking.

The shorter man arched an eyebrow at him, silently warning Trowa to shut the fuck up if he wanted to keep his tongue in his mouth.

“Yo, 02.”

Duo looked up from his desk, pushing his headphones off of his ears and staring at Anhil, his expression a mixture of curiosity and irritation.

“Yeah?”

Anhil made a ‘come here’ gesture.

“You could use some sun. Ride with Trowa and me.”

Duo lifted both his eyebrows and looked between them.

“I didn’t know either of you were into threesomes.”

One of the guys sitting on the couch choked on a laugh.

“You’re not my type, boca grande,” Anhil muttered.

Duo grinned wolfishly, and Anhil realized the opening he had given the other man.

“Come on,” he said, before Duo could speak. “We’re meeting with a new pilot. You can give us your opinion.”

Duo looked at Trowa.

“You’ve got Mr. Tall, Dark and Angry. He knows enough about flying not to crash on takeoff. He can give you plenty of opinions. Besides, I’ve got some projects to work on for la mujer, and-”

Anhil’s eyes narrowed.

“I might not be God or the Devil, 02, but I’m not asking. I’m telling you to get off your ass.”

Around them, the room fell silent.

Duo slowly rose to his feet.

“Shotgun,” he growled, and walked past them.

Anhil muttered something under his breath that made Trowa smirk.

Anhil glared up at him, and Trowa shrugged.

“There’s a reason I don’t like him,” Trowa pointed out.

Anhil muttered something else, and threw the car keys at Trowa.

Trowa actually grimaced as he caught them.

Driving meant sitting beside Duo.

A realization that the long-haired man had as soon as Trowa hauled himself into the driver’s side of the Jeep.

Duo’s jaw tightened, and he tapped an angry, impatient tattoo on the open window of the passenger side as he waited for Trowa to start the Jeep and throw it into gear.

Anhil settled in the back, and Trowa spared him a glance, saw his amused smirk, and rolled his eyes.

Thankfully, the wind roaring through the open windows meant no conversation was possible, and it was silent between the three men except for Anhil’s occasional shouted directions.

Fifty minutes took them around Mazatlan and towards the backwater town of El Walamo.

Trowa had driven through the town once before, months ago, on the night after he had helped Anhil bury the bodies of three girls that Gerhard had pulled aside from the most recent colonial shipment and decided to have fun with. Trowa had taken the Jeep, had mumbled something about going into Mazatlan to get laid, and had driven south, through Mazatlan and El Walamo and on until El Caimanero. He had parked the Jeep directly on the beach and sat on the sand, had let the waves creep closer and closer with the tide, and had stared out into the roaring darkness and wondered what he had become.

Anhil directed Trowa to pull into El Walamo’s single convenience store.

“Gotta take a dump,” Anhil offered. “Fill up the tank.”

Duo snorted, but refrained from making any comment when Anhil gave him a challenging look.

Trowa got out of the Jeep and walked around to the passenger side. He unscrewed the gas cap and started to pump gas into the tank.

The weather was warmer than usual for April, the sun out and the breeze almost nonexistent.

It was depressingly pleasant.

The sound of rhythmic thumping drew his attention, and he looked over to see Duo’s right hand, draped through his open window, idly hitting the side of the Jeep in time to the music blasting over the convenience store’s speakers.

Duo’s arms were covered in tattoos, but Trowa’s attention was drawn to the one on his wrist, the black outline of a lion.

They had been drunk, had been celebrating Trowa’s entirely made-up birthday, had fucked for hours and had still been buzzed when Duo had suggested they properly commemorate the night. They had both gotten tattoos. Duo had gone first, had smirked as he requested the lion over the pale skin of his wrist.

It was simple, it could have meant anything, but even Quatre had known, after seeing it the first time, that it meant more than just a drunken misadventure.

Trowa swallowed hard and looked away from Duo’s arm, turning entirely, just in time to see a large, black SUV pull into the parking lot, barely skidding to a halt before the doors started to open.

The captain of the mercenary group Trowa had grown up with had always said Trowa had good instincts, had always claimed Trowa could sense danger. The captain had trusted Trowa’s instincts too much, to everyone's detriment.

But right now, those instincts were screaming at Trowa.

“Zasada!” he called out, even as he tossed the gas line aside and moved to put the Jeep between himself and the black SUV.

He heard Duo swear, saw his head dive down just as the first gunshots ripped through the air.

Trowa crouched down on the driver’s side of the Jeep, pulling out his FN Five-seveN and waiting for the rounds of gunfire to subside before returning fire.

The driver’s door jerked open and Duo spilled out, gracelessly falling to the ground and muttering curses in Spanish as he positioned himself behind a tire and pulled out his HK USP, a gun that definitely wasn’t something the rest of the Sinaloa cartel used, but that Duo had been using since he had been a teenage terrorist.

There was a lull, and Trowa risked a glance around the back of the Jeep.

He didn’t recognize any of the six shooters, but he did recognize the snake tattoo on the neck of one of them.

He shifted away as they continued to shoot.

“Friends of yours?” Duo called out.

Trowa gave him a look.

“Snakeheads.”

They shared a grimace.

“I’m not a tactical genius, Tro, but can I point out that taking cover between a Jeep and these,” Duo kicked the gas feed in front of him, “isn’t the best idea in the world ever?”

Trowa glared at him, but Duo was right. Sooner or later - definitely sooner - the gas tank in the Jeep was going to be punctured, or the gas feed would be.

And then they would be really fucked.

He looked around.

The convenience store was a good ten yards away, and the Snakeheads would have a clear line of sight on them if they ran for it.

Still…

Duo followed his gaze and swore.

“I should have fucking stayed at the hacienda playing fucking Minesweeper.”

“And let me die alone?”

Duo’s eyes turned fierce.

“Neither of us is dying here, Tro.” His voice was deadly serious, steely and even.

Trowa nodded in agreement.

“Then we need to move.”

“On three?” Duo suggested.

Trowa nodded again.

“One, two-”

The door to the convenience store was thrown wide open as Anhil stepped out, FNs in each hand, firing at the black SUV.

Duo made a sound that was somewhere between a laugh and a primal roar, and he and Trowa took off running towards Anhil, firing at the SUV as they went.

Trowa saw three of the Snakeheads go down, saw a fourth start climbing back into the SUV and-

And Anhil stumbled, eyes going wide, and red started to bloom across his right thigh.

Duo tackled Anhil to the ground, throwing them back into the store as the glass windows were shattered by bullets.

Trowa followed them into the store, skidding down onto his knees beside Duo and Anhil.

Anhil was groaning, teeth gritted together tightly while he cursed the Snakeheads and himself.

Trowa reached towards Anhil’s leg, but Duo was a step ahead of him, shoving his HK into Trowa’s hand and feeling the wound.

“No exit wound,” Duo muttered, and then grabbed Anhil’s hands. “Hold pressure while we go fuck these chingados up.”

Anhil sneered, but he dropped one of his FNs and pressed down on the wound, growling in pain as he did so.

Duo waited for Anhil to nod, and then he turned to Trowa with a feral grin.

“Ready?”

Trowa handed the HK back to Duo, and picked up Anhil’s abandoned FN.

“Ready.”

The look Duo gave him made Trowa’s already racing pulse skitter.

Shinigami was looking at him, ready for death and battle, and Trowa felt that dark part of himself rise up as well, felt his adrenaline spike, and could practically taste the metallic tang of blood on his tongue.

Without speaking, they rose and moved towards the shot-out windows, taking cover behind a cooler while they assessed the parking lot.

Two of the Snakeheads were cautiously approaching the convenience store, while a third was checking for signs of life among the fallen Snakeheads.

Duo moved quickly, confidently taking down the unsuspecting man, and then he and Trowa were bursting out of the store and firing at the other two armed Snakeheads.

Trowa took down one, winging him in the shoulder, and the man stumbled and fell to his knees.

Out of the corner of his eye, Trowa saw Duo put a bullet through the other man’s head.

Trowa approached his guy, kicking the gun out of his reach and crouching down beside him.

“Who sent you?” he demanded.

The man looked up at him with wide, pain-filled eyes.

“Who sent you?” Trowa repeated as he pressed the heel of his hand on the wound in his shoulder.

He roared with pain, but offered no information.

Trowa sighed and pointed his gun towards the man’s knee.

Before he could fire, however, the man rolled, pulling a knife and lunging for Trowa.

Trowa just barely threw himself backwards in time to avoid a slashed neck.

Duo’s shot took the man in the chest, the impact of the bullet jerking his body farther away from Trowa. Duo’s next shot went into his head.

Trowa rose to his feet, and Duo’s eyes looked over him, dark and furious, searching for a wound.

“I’m fine,” Trowa assured him. “Check them for ID. I’m calling this in and taking care of Anhil.”

Duo nodded, but he made no immediate move to follow Trowa’s instructions.

Instead, their eyes caught and held, and there was an ocean of unspoken words between them, threatening to drown Trowa.

He was the one to walk away, turning from Duo and going back into the convenience store.

Anhil was still sitting on the floor, had moved to prop himself against a rack of candy bars, and his face was pale and beaded with sweat.

Trowa handed over his phone.

“Call Salome,” he said.

Anhil’s fingers fumbled a bit, but he dialed and held the phone to his ear.

Trowa, meanwhile, pushed Anhil’s hand away from his thigh.

There was no spurting blood, which meant the bullet hadn’t hit an artery, which meant Anhil wasn’t going to bleed out immediately.

But the wound still needed pressure, and he still needed medical attention as soon as possible.

Anhil was speaking into the phone, muttering in Spanish too garbled with pain and too rapid for Trowa to keep up, but after a moment, he dropped the phone and nodded at Trowa.

“Doc’s gonna meet us at the hacienda,” he said.

Trowa pulled off his shirt and folded it over several times before he pressed it against Anhil’s thigh.

“Good. Because the last time I played field medic, it was to amputate someone’s leg. And I’m not going to listen to you bitch at me about doing that wrong,” he said.

Anhil gave a weak, broken laugh that turned into a cough and then a groan of pain.

By the time Duo came back into the store, Trowa had coaxed the terrified store clerk into giving Anhil water and finding his first-aid kit, not that a tube of antibiotic cream or a butterfly bandage was going to do them much good.

Duo’s face was grim, Shinigami still in his eyes.

He looked at Anhil, and then his gaze swept over Trowa.

All of the fiery bloodlust in his eyes cooled, chilling his eyes to blue ice as he looked over Trowa’s torso.

He could feel Duo’s rage as he saw the new scars, the new tattoos. And then his eyes fixed on the rosary.

Duo’s rosary.

-o-

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:
> 
> Moi deiti: Russian for My Children  
> Lisichka: Russian for Little Fox (feminine)  
> Payaso: Spanish for Clown. Somewhat insulting.  
> Chapo: Spanish for cartel soldier  
> Estoy demasiado borracho. No sería beuno. Spanish for: I’m too drunk. I wouldn’t be any good.  
> Hermano: Spanish for brother, buddy, bro  
> La Mujer: Spanish for boss lady  
> Mne nuzhno eto. Ostav’ menya v pokoye. Russian for: I need this. Leave me alone.  
> Boca grande: Spanish for big mouth.  
> Zasada: Russian for ambush.  
> Chingados: Spanish for motherfuckers


	6. Personal Jesus

_ Lift up the receiver, _

_ I’ll make you a believer. _

_ I will deliver, _

_ You know I’m a forgiver. _

_ Reach out and touch faith. _

_ -Johnny Cash _

* * *

 

In the week following the incident in El Walamo, everything was both better and infinitely worse.  To say things at the  _ hacienda _ were tense was like saying water was wet, such an obvious understatement as to be laughable. Alessandra tore through the compound like an icy wind, rage trailing in her wake, snapping at anyone who so much as looked at her oddly, and god forbid someone make an actual mistake with Salome slinking around behind her like some sort of predator waiting to pounce.  

__

The entire crew barely dared to  _ breathe _ .

__

So that was worse, much worse, as far as everyone’s comfort level was concerned.  But better, because it paved the way for progress for both Duo and Trowa on this op, putting them that much closer to their goal of getting the fuck out.  So far, they were the only two people in the entire house - other than Anhil, who’d been out of pocket, recovering in the back of the house where the doctor sequestered patients - that the women weren’t terrorizing.

__

Also better, Duo had anticipated, had hoped, was a breakthrough in his tense relationship with Trowa.

__

Duo sighed silently as Trowa brushed past him on his way to the kitchen, a lifted eyebrow his only acknowledgement, Duo’s chin jerking in response.

__

Obviously, he had been mistaken.

__

There had been a moment, a shining beacon during the ambush, where all of the bullshit had fallen away and it had just been Duo and Trowa, watching out for one another like they had for the last decade, succeeding against impossible odds, almost no thought or conversation required.

__

A moment where Trowa had looked at him, had seen him, had seen  _ Duo _ , and not looked like a wounded animal.  Had looked like the old Trowa, the man Duo would  _ literally _ give his life for, and-

__

And then they’d rushed back to the compound, Anhil bleeding out in the back of the jeep and bitching about Duo’s driving while Trowa held pressure on his leg, to Alessandra’s transcendent fury and Salome’s infinite suspicion, and the moment had been shattered like crystal dropped on concrete.

__

Duo didn’t know what in the fuck to do anymore.

__

Trowa had asked him for space, had told Duo in no uncertain terms to leave him alone, and Duo - never one to do anything by halves and more than a little fucking spiteful, as long as he was being honest - had given it to him in  _ spades _ .

__

No one had seemed to like that any better than the bitter barbs they’d been lobbing before, least of all Trowa, but Duo hadn’t had it in him to give a fuck.  The other man wanted to do shit by himself, then  _ by god _ , Duo was damn well going to let him.  

__

It was more than a little frustrating to be here trying to save Trowa’s ass, only to be told in not so many words to fuck off.

__

Then Trowa had joked about dying alone, and  _ then _ he’d nearly gotten himself gutted by a piece of shit gangbanger from L5 whom Duo had killed without even a half-second of hesitation-

__

Well, to be fair, the last time Duo had hesitated, had tried to shoot to  _ wound _ , it had been at Heero, and they all knew how  _ that _ had turned out. Heero fucking Yuy hadn’t let two gunshot wounds slow him down, and Duo only aimed for center mass and headshots now. It was one of the many, many reasons he’d declined becoming an ‘official’ Preventers agent.

__

When Duo learned a lesson the hard way, he didn’t fucking forget it.

__

Still.

__

There had been a brief time when he’d thought he and Trowa would now be able to work together on this op, and it had been sandblasted into nonexistence almost immediately by Trowa’s unrelenting return to petulant silence and avoidance.

__

Although, at least he was acknowledging Duo’s presence now, which was a marginal improvement.

__

Very marginal.

__

What he really wanted was a return to the ease and camaraderie he was used to from the taller man, not to mention the mind-blowing and acrobatic sex-

__

He wasn’t going to think about that.  Therein lay the road to madness.

__

Duo blew out a frustrated breath, adjusting his headphones to a more comfortable position.  Not that he had anything playing on them, but they were a natural deterrent for most people.

__

Most people did not include Salome.

__

He was reviewing data on the network with a fine-toothed comb when she sidled up, sliding lithely onto the desk next to him as he forced down his natural urge to flinch.  Everything about her screamed danger to instincts that had been well-honed over a lifetime. A finely-tuned knack for identifying the most dangerous thing in the room, and here it was always, always Salome.  Every time she looked at him, he was reminded of the time he’d seen a cat toy with an injured mouse, letting it think it was going to escape, hobbled and bleeding, before the feline had finally bitten off the poor creature’s head.

__

Finishing up the line of code he was looking over, he slid the headphones off and swivelled to face her, eyebrow raised.

__

Salome, he had decided, didn’t like  _ bullshit _ .  She wasn’t interested in being charmed.  She didn’t like his winning smiles or his attempts at humor.  Salome was only amused by violence, pain, and the kind of irony that meant someone innocent probably died.  

__

And, apparently, Alessandra, a subject which was carefully  _ never _ discussed in the compound.

__

Once, not long after Duo had arrived, one of the newer enforcers had brought it up, a few shots of tequila too deep.  Stepan, who’d been at the hacienda only a few weeks longer than Duo, had asked what Salome  _ did _ , what her  _ position _ was, why he should have to follow her instructions.

__

It had been stupid, really, to start with, and a few of the others had tried to shut him up.

__

Duo had gotten up to leave, moving across the room to another table to drink alone.  Watched. Waited. Disassociated himself from what was surely going to be an utter disaster.

__

Stepan had gotten steadily more belligerent, until finally he’d blurted out a rumor he had heard in another gang, that Alessandra and Salome had both been  _ merchandise _ , caught in the grind of the network, until Alessandra had caught the right eye, and in a series of strangely coincidental accidents, found herself in a position to take over, bringing Salome with her.

__

He’d said she was nothing but a former  _ whore. _

__

Duo had slipped quietly out of the room, had seen Trowa doing the same through another exit, both of them retreating as half a dozen of the remaining men and women had reared back from Stepan, suddenly aware of just how badly he’d fucked up and wondering if they were going to get caught in the resultant collateral damage.  If their curiosity was going to be the cause of their deaths.

__

Stepan had disappeared quite suddenly, as though he had never existed.

__

Nothing else was said about either Alessandra, or Salome, or the nature of their relationship.

__

Salome smirked down at him now, jerking her head towards the back of the house.  “ _ La mujer _ ,” and whenever she used the Spanish title, it always sounded a little sarcastic, for reasons Duo, personally, never wanted to know, “wants to talk to you.”

__

He got up, dropping the headphones on the desk.

__

He didn’t bother to lock the computer.  He never kept anything incriminating on it, and what he was doing right now was exactly what Alessandra wanted.  

__

She was convinced they had a leak.  

__

Duo was convinced she was right, but he was relatively certain it wasn’t an electronic one.  His system was airtight, and he’d been through weeks of activity and found absolutely nothing that shouldn’t be there.  Now that Duo was in place on the op, there was nothing for Trowa to communicate to Preventers, and he’d only been checking the stupid clown-fucking website sporadically as a matter of course.  

__

Duo had nothing to communicate to anyone, and therefore didn’t.

__

But still, he was digging through every byte of code, because that’s what she wanted, and because Duo wanted to get his hands on the fucker that had nearly gotten him  _ and Trowa _ killed.  He was hoping to gleefully hand them over to Alessandra, truth be told, because he could be every bit as vicious and mercenary as Trowa, something the other man had evidently forgotten.

__

This, of course, was in addition to the nasty little virus he’d cooked up for the Snakeheads network that Alessandra had already requested, prior to their little tete-a-tete with the now-dead ambushers. It was just a matter of slipping it into their system, which wasn’t his problem to figure out.

__

Duo followed Salome down the hall, though he knew the way by now, of course.

__

Just inside the office door, he came to a dead stop.

__

Anhil was seated just off to Alessandra’s left, the first Duo had seen him since El Walamo, his leg propped on a footstool, engaged in a visual battle of wills with Trowa, who was perched on the edge of one of Alessandra’s leather chairs.  Neither of them acknowledged his entrance. 

__

Salome strolled around the desk to lean her hip against the edge next to Alessandra, as casual as could be, still smirking.  She seemed to thrive on the tension and discord she created.

__

Whatever this was, Duo was not interested in it.

__

“Gentlemen,” Alessandra said, and Trowa broke off his staring contest with Anhil, though it was by no means a concession of defeat, to turn his attention to her.  “The next shipment is arriving in three days.”

__

Duo raised his eyebrows.  That was quick, considering the trouble they’d been having, the most recent shipment notwithstanding.

__

“Because Anhil is… otherwise indisposed… the two of you are going to be ensuring that this one is successful.”

__

Oh.

__

Fuck.

__

_ Fuck _ .

__

This was going to go very poorly, if the look on Trowa’s face was any sort of indication.

__

It made sense to send Trowa.  He was effectively Anhil’s right-hand man.  He’d worked for that for  _ months, _ for nearly a year, to be exactly that. 

__

It made less sense to send Duo.  Duo, who was still proving himself, still being watched, still not trusted.

__

Until last week, when he’d helped Trowa kill a bunch of Snakeheads and save Anhil’s life.

__

_ Fuck _ .

__

“I don’t need  _ his _ help to oversee a shipment,” Trowa ground out, and Duo didn’t flinch, didn’t let the flicker of hurt cross his face.

__

“No?” Alessandra looked amused.  “Your Spanish has gotten so good,  _ tigryenok _ ?  I had no idea. __ _ Mira qué cabrón _ _! _ ”

__

Trowa glowered.

__

No, his Spanish hadn’t gotten that fucking good, and they all knew it.

__

Duo’s, on the other hand, was.  Duo, who’d grown up in a ragtag gang on L2 where a bastardized mix of Spanish and English  _ was _ the local language, spoke Spanish like a native, and he got the little nuances that escaped most people.

__

Trowa spoke Russian like he was born to it, but here, dirtside, most of the crew spoke Spanish.  Russian was an asset on L3, and therefore, the arriving  _ palomniks _ , but here it wasn’t very helpful unless Alessandra was making up cute nicknames.

__

Duo snorted, and Trowa turned to glare at him instead.

__

“ _ Payaso _ ,  _ eso que ni qué. _ ”  He could practically hear Trowa grinding his teeth.

__

Turning back to Alessandra, he grinned, turning the charm all the way up.  Unlike Salome, she did like to be schmoozed. Enjoyed it, liked to know that others wanted to please her, to make her happy.

__

“I want a bonus.”

__

Duo knew he was walking a very fine line, but she also liked to be challenged.  Just a little bit.

__

The dark-haired woman smirked at him.  “A bonus, hmm? Whatever for?”

__

He jerked his chin at Trowa.  “Puttin’ up with him. Translator services.  Gettin’ possibly shot at. I signed up for electronic security, and last week, I shot, like, six guys.  I think I should get hazard pay.” He shrugged, plastered on a look that was one part hopeful, two parts resigned. As though he wanted the money but didn’t expect them to say yes. Working to keep their attention on him and not on Trowa’s face.

__

Not on Trowa’s  _ expression _ , which was nothing short of horrified.

__

Alessandra stared at him for a long moment, considering, before she nodded.  “Fine.  _ If _ the shipment is handled without incident, you can expect your… bonus.”

__

Duo rocked back on his heels in surprise, before his grin widened.

__

“But,” Alessandra continued, and Duo swallowed the smile on his face at the word, “the two of you  _ will _ learn to work together, yes?”

__

It sounded like a question, but it wasn’t. Not really.  Duo nodded, could see Trowa doing the same, could see that he’d schooled his features into something more impassive.

__

“Speaking of rewards-” Alessandra was already moving along, so certain of their cooperation, of their acquiescence to her demands, and why shouldn’t she be?  “-and last week’s… misadventure.” 

__

Salome snickered, and out of the corner of his eye, Duo saw Anhil stiffen.

__

That ‘misadventure’ had left a hole in his leg the size of a quarter, and medical treatment in the hacienda was like the old American wild west, with booze and biting on leather and cauterizing wounds.  He’d live, but his leg was never going to look the same.

__

Alessandra went on, ignoring the interruption.  “Anhil tells me that he’d be  _ quite _ dead if not for the two of you, so it seems only fair to offer you some form of… compensation.”

__

She reached for a folder, and Duo had the sudden, horrifying realization of what she was planning to offer them.

__

That was her  _ special _ list, the one which included her favorite  _ palomniks _ , her best merchandise - people, slaves, employees, however she thought of it - that she’d grown especially fond of, that she offered special rewards to, gave special treatment to, in the sense that you could give someone you effectively owned preferential treatment.  They went to the parties of politicians and entertainers, the homes of powerful men and women, rather than the street corners and the whorehouses. Or they stayed in the house and kept the enforcers occupied, kept their minds and the information in them from wandering.

__

“Does this mean I finally get the day off I’ve been asking for?” he blurted, the words out almost before he’d consciously thought them.

__

The absolute  _ last  _ thing he wanted was a special, human reward turning up in his narrow bed some unexpected evening.

__

Unless it was Trowa.

__

He firmly, carefully squashed that thought.

__

The Cartel was  _ familia _ , and for the most part, they came and went as they pleased.  But new people, people like Duo, didn’t leave the compound. Often for months, and especially not unaccompanied.  That was part of the reason there had been such a long gap in Trowa’s messages when Duo got back, though it was months later when he’d gotten them at all.  Trowa had earned days off, days he often ended up stuck going to fucking baseball games with fucking Merquise, but he had them. A couple of days a month to leave and do whatever he wanted, so long as he took a phone that could be tracked.

__

Duo’d been tooling around the hacienda for nearly two months, and he’d fully expected to do so for another few, but the ambush had changed everything.

__

Increased his esteem in Alessandra’s eyes, but also pushed up the timeline for dealing with the Snakeheads, and there was still  _ work _ to be done, work that required at least semi-trusted hands and eyes, and with Anhil out of the picture and the other enforcers relatively new and the possibility of a leak, Duo was the best choice, after Trowa.

__

If he were trusted enough for that, he could be trusted with a day off.

__

Salome was the one considering him now, eyes scraping over him from head to toe as she considered his request. Again, he was reminded of the mouse. 

__

Finally, she laughed, shrugging.

__

“Let him have his day off, Lessy, he’s bored.  Besides,” her eyes cut briefly to Trowa and back, “I don’t think you’ll have anyone that suits him.”  The edge of her smile was just cruel enough to let Duo know he, at least, was more obvious than he liked.

__

Another complication.

__

Alessandra tucked the folder away without even offering it to Trowa.  She waved them both out, muttering about picky men, Salome laughing again.

__

As the door shut behind them, Duo looked up at Trowa in question.

__

“I’ve been clear that I prefer to pick my own bed partners,” the taller man grumbled, stomping off, leaving Duo confused and surprised in his wake.

__

Whatever Trowa’s problem was, Trowa would have to deal with it.  Duo still had work to do.

__

Back at his computer, headphones in place, he tried his best to put it all in the back of his mind as he continued examining electronic records and bullshit porn accounts.

__

*

__

Duo looked up when the commotion from somewhere on the grounds finally penetrated both his headphones and his concentration.  He took them off, hooking them over the monitor, and looked around. The main living area of the  _ hacienda _ was uncharacteristically empty, and he could hear something filtering in from outside, shouting and swearing.  He and Trowa were expecting the shipment to arrive sometime in the next 24 to 48 hours, assuming it wasn’t delayed for a second time, and the other man had gotten increasingly short-tempered and tense as the time passed.  It had been nearly a week since Alessandra had  _ informed _ them that they’d be responsible for this one, and other than a brief conversation detailing the particulars of how offloading and transport was handled, they hadn’t spoken about it again.

__

He sighed.  Duo wasn’t sure he even  _ wanted _ to know what was going on.

__

Curiosity in the cartel could get you killed.  As Stepan could tell you. If he were alive, which he undoubtedly wasn’t.

__

Then again, so did ignorance.

__

Getting up from the desk, he made his way towards the noise, out the side door of the sprawling house to the yard where several of the cartel members liked to sit on cool evenings, smoking and drinking cheap beer.  The closer he got to the yard, the more sure he was that it was a terrible idea.

__

Sure enough, when he pushed his way through the swinging door, it was complete chaos.

__

Trowa and fucking Matvei - it was  _ always _ Matvei  - were having some kind of altercation that had clearly devolved well past shouting and shoving.  Duo walked outside just in time to see Trowa grab the other man’s forearm and  _ twist _ just so, and even across the yard Duo could hear bone snap, the other man’s short, sharp scream giving away the injury, and then Trowa was just pummeling him and-

__

Duo looked around, expecting Anhil to intervene - Anhil, the only one who had any hope of talking any kind of sense into Trowa, who looked practically feral from even Duo’s point of view.

__

And then Duo remembered Anhil had left, this afternoon in fact, to go arrange something to do with the incoming shipment, and even the other men and women - hardened gangsters and enforcers and criminals - gathered around the fight were starting to look green and uncomfortable, and  _ someone _ had to do something.  Alessandra was  _ not _ going to be pleased if she came back and Trowa had beaten the shit out of Matvei.  She was already going to be pissed off that his arm was broken.

__

Duo nudged the woman on his right, Veta, as he picked his way through the group. She was another of the  _ palomniks _ , one who had been floating around the house ever since he’d arrived. Pretty, and popular amongst the enforcers, but not enough of either to draw Salome’s ire.  “The fuck happened?”

__

“Matvei was talking stupid shit, like always, talking about how-” She turned, caught sight of just who she was speaking to, and abruptly went silent.

__

Ah.  Matvei been talking about Duo, or about Gundam pilots, or about Duo and Trowa running the shipments, or who the fuck knew, and it really didn’t matter.

__

Duo sighed.

__

He shouldered his way through the remaining people between him and Trowa, coming to a stop when he cleared the loose circle that had formed around them and sized up the situation.

__

Trowa was just fucking with the guy - Matvei cradling his injured arm, blood streaming from his nose - and though Trowa hadn’t even broken a sweat, Duo could see the barely leashed fury in his stance, in the square of his shoulders, and the realization on Matvei’s face that he’d bitten off more than he could chew.

__

He couldn’t say he didn’t find it at least a little bit satisfying, to see the big, Russian enforcer reduced to near tears by so little effort.  Duo didn’t like the man, and the feeling was mutual. He’d started it, of course, with the little knife trick, but Matvei had done everything in his power to increase the animosity, spurred on by some imagined competition between the two of them.

__

As if he were any competition for Duo in any sense of the word.

__

But he’d probably been angling for some kind of third in line recognition when Duo had arrived, and the most recent news that Duo would be accompanying Trowa to the offloading site, that  _ Duo _ would be giving instructions, had probably been too much for the man.

__

And he’d said too much, taken it too far, and Trowa had been a short fuse waiting for a spark.

__

Duo and Trowa didn’t  _ spar _ .  That shit was for Heero and Wufei, who’d had formal training in hand to hand combat and martial arts, who knew how to back down from a fight that was supposed to be friendly, was supposed to be  _ training _ .  Duo grew up on the streets, where fast and dirty and quick kept you alive, where kind and easy and mercy got you dead - or worse.  Trowa had been raised by mercs, where there was no such thing as a fair fight, only a fight you won or lost, and losing meant dead.

__

Theirs were skills that had been developed during childhoods fraught with danger, honed to razor-sharp edges by Gundam pilot training, and maintained and utilized during all-too-necessary undercover missions that weren’t really undercover at all. They weren’t for entertainment or pleasure or stress relief or any of the millions of reasons other people fought. Duo and Trowa weren’t fighters.  They were survivors. 

__

Their fights were deadly serious.  

__

The next time Trowa lifted his fist to punch Matvei, broadcasting his intentions for miles to anyone who knew what to look for, Duo slipped into the opening, wrenching his wrist and tugging him around, trying to defuse the situation before it got any worse.  

__

Before Salome showed up and demanded a pound of flesh.

__

He failed miserably, because instead of looking at Duo, of reading the tension of the situation and reeling himself back in, Duo’s touch only seemed to infuriate Trowa, to spur him on to new heights of rage.  Instead of backing down, he retaliated.

__

With a sucker punch to the gut, leaving Duo winded and bruised and instantly fucking  _ pissed off _ .

__

“That was a cheap shot, you fuck.”

__

Trowa shrugged, grinning darkly, and Duo could see that Matvei had gotten in a least one lucky shot - or Trowa had given him a free one - because his teeth were dark with blood from a cut inside his mouth.  

__

From the corner of his eye, Duo saw Matvei being pulled away from the fight by the girl - another of the  _ palomniks  _ \- who hung around him like a lost puppy.  Matvei paid entirely too much attention to her, Salome had muttered once, darkly, but Alessandra had waved it off and the girl had stayed.  

__

Duo dismissed both of them from his mind, facing his sometimes-partner and current opponent.

__

Trowa was bigger than Duo - broader, packed more raw power.  Duo was fast and sneaky and not above a switchblade to the kidney if the situation called for it, and nothing,  _ nothing _ about this was going to end well, and they both knew it.  

__

It didn’t stop a matching grin from spreading across Duo’s face, Shinigami peeking out, because he’d been itching, for weeks, to vent his spleen at Trowa’s prickly exterior and shitty attitude and bullshit fucking excuses, and if the other man was looking for a fight, well, Duo wasn’t averse to giving it to him.

__

The fight started out brutal and ugly, and it only spiralled further downhill.  There was a token effort, at first, by some of the enforcers to break it up, and then nothing but the respectful silence of people who knew they were watching an equally matched, vicious brawl.  If either Duo or Trowa was exercising some kind of restraint, it wasn’t noticeable. Duo sure as hell wasn’t pulling his punches, and if either one of them had been any slower, any less in tune with one another, one or both of them would be seriously injured.

__

Somehow, they managed nothing more serious than glancing punches and elbow checks, though Duo got Trowa into an armbar that could have broken his elbow if the other man weren’t so flexible, and Trowa wrenched Duo’s shoulder into an angle uncomfortable enough that he’d need to ice it later before he twisted free.

__

They fought to complete exhaustion, until both of them were laying on the ground, panting, anger dissipating with the slow slide of their own blood from bruised knuckles and split lips.  Duo almost laughed, would have laughed if he’d had the breath for it, and heard Trowa snort next to him in response to the aborted sound of amusement he made.

__

The humor lasted only as long as it took for Salome to appear in the crowd around them, Duo recognizing the black denim and high-heeled boots in his periphery.

__

Shit. 

__

This needed to be salvaged, and it needed to be done  _ immediately _ . 

__

He panted up at the blindingly bright blue sky and wondered, furiously, what would appease the blonde, would make her amused rather than annoyed, especially as they’d both already been given explicit instructions to get their shit together. 

__

_ Work out your differences, gentlemen.  Or we will work them out for you. _

__

_ You  _ **_will_ ** _ learn to work together, yes? _

__

He didn’t doubt Alessandra had meant the words. 

__

Two strikes.

__

Would a third mean they were out?

__

Rolling his head to the side, he noted the tension in Trowa’s jaw, the tightness around his eyes, and knew he’d noticed the same thing Duo had.  Finally realized what sort of shit he’d gotten them into.

__

Well, Duo could only do what he did best.  Redirect, divert, distract.

__

“Your idea of foreplay sucks, Barton,” he lobbed into the strained silence, as though he hadn’t noticed Salome’s arrival, wasn’t aware of her scrutinizing their every move.

__

If possible, Trowa’s tension increased at his words, but Duo was committed now.  He rolled over onto the other man, propping himself up on the elbow that wasn’t bruised from their impromptu cage match.  Leaning down, he gave Trowa a half-second to decide - either he was all-in for this or they were both going to suffer the consequences.

__

And Duo would, if that’s what it came down to.  If Trowa said no, then he’d suffer, and that would be that.

__

Trowa deserved the option to say no, because he so seldom got it.

__

But then Trowa gave him the barest jerk of his chin, the most infinitesimal nod, and Duo was kissing him furiously, putting on a good show just long enough to break the mood, until one of the idiots around them gave an obscene catcall, causing a raucous round of laughter, made all the more intense by the release of anxiety the group had collectively been harboring.

__

Bounding to his feet, Duo offered Trowa a hand up, a hand the other man gazed at warily before accepting, allowing Duo to pull him to his feet.  Duo trailed a hand across his abdomen before stepping back. 

__

Both of them hanging around was as good as admitting to their guilt.

__

“Come find me later, hmm?”  Not quite a whisper - he wanted the words to be heard, after all - but still pitched low.  Intimate. Just as much for Trowa as for their audience. He stared up into the green eyes he knew as well as his own in a mirror, regretted the pain and confusion he saw there.

__

Regretted a lot of things, for a fleeting moment.

__

And then he sauntered off, heading for an ice pack and a shower, Trowa staring silently after him.

__

*

__

Duo was waiting for Trowa when he burst through the door to his room, lounging comfortably on the bed - sprawled, really - with an icepack on his face and his hair tied up carelessly.

__

He knew two ways to stop a fight with Trowa Barton.  

__

One was to be injured.  Check. 

__

The other was to be naked.  

__

Almost check, given that all he’d put on after his shower was running shorts.

__

Duo threw an extra ice pack at him as he came through the door, Trowa catching it reflexively, stopping the flow of words that was just waiting to tumble out of his mouth - angry ones, judging by the frown on his face and the look in his eyes.

__

Trowa glanced down at ice pack in his hand and back up to Duo in a double-take that was almost comical.

__

Duo gestured at him, at the worsening swelling on the side of his face, the cut along his brow, made by Duo’s knuckles.  

__

“You won’t be able to see outta that eye tomorrow if you don’t ice it.”

__

As though Trowa didn’t know that.  Irritably, the other man pressed the pack to the side of his face, looking at Duo through his good eye.  His mouth thinned out as he pressed his lips together in irritation, or something.

__

Duo never could get a good read on him, except in the middle of a firefight.

__

“Why are you here?” Trowa ground out, finally, as he shut the door behind him and leaned on it.

__

Duo shrugged carelessly.  “I met the boss’s other coder, some antisocial fuck who can’t even order a fuckin’ taco - you think that woulda been a better choice?” He snorted derisively.

__

They both knew he meant Heero, and they also both knew exactly how true his words were.  Trowa’s eyes darkened. He couldn’t even argue that he hadn’t been worried about what would happen to Heero, here, under Alessandra’s dark gaze and Salome’s vicious good cheer.

__

“Why do you hate me so much?” Duo asked idly, shifting the ice pack to the ache in his shoulder.  It would probably hurt for days.

__

Trowa ground his jaw so hard Duo could almost hear his molars cracking.  “I don’t hate you. I just…” he trailed off, the  _ I just don’t want you here _ going unspoken.

__

He tried not to let the hurt show on his face, he really did, but Duo knew his poker face wasn’t as good where Trowa was concerned, and dammit, it did hurt.

__

A deep breath. 

__

“I just don’t want  _ you _ here.” Trowa admitted, finally, and Duo had a sudden flash of understanding.

__

Sally had pulled him into that meeting on  _ purpose _ .  The look Une had given him, of confusion and concern, suddenly made sense.  The way Trowa had agreed to such a long op, knowing he’d be gone for months before Duo even came back, even though they tried to time their missions so that there was at least some downtime they spent together.

__

“You  _ motherfucker _ ,” Duo spat, scrambling off the bed to stand toe to toe with Trowa, ice pack forgotten, to glare up at the other man.  “You self-righteous bastard.”

__

Trowa reached out, hesitantly, and Duo smacked his hand away and gave him a shove that moved him exactly zero inches. 

__

“What the  _ fuck _ ?” he hissed, staring at the other man.

__

Trowa shrugged, all pretense gone.  Just stared at Duo like a starving man looks at a buffet and-

__

“You’re so fucking  _ stupid _ ,” Duo muttered, and then he reached out, yanking the other man down to him and covering his mouth with his own.

__

The kiss outside had been for the crowd.  A spectacle, a distraction, something done to save their lives.

__

This kiss, this one was for Duo.  He ignored the sting of his lip, and the ache of his jaw, and focused instead on the pleasure of their mouths meeting, of having what he hadn’t had in months, what he’d missed like a physical ache, and Trowa was so fucking dumb he’d been denying both of them this out of some kind of misplaced sense of, what? Protecting him?

__

“You’re so fucking stupid,” he said again, his voice barely audible to his own ears, much less Trowa’s, as he worked his way across barely-there stubble, “acting like I’m not at  _ least _ as fucked up as you are, or more.  Like I haven’t done horrible shit that I never want to remember and can’t fucking forget.”

__

He tugged the other man away from the door, shoved him towards the bed. 

__

Because, oh yeah, he was still fucking pissed off.

__

He paused to strip Trowa’s shirt off before he pushed him down onto the not-comfortable-enough mattress, climbing over him.

__

“You don’t-” Duo cut himself off with a harsh breath.  Started again. “You think I don’t know? That I don’t understand exactly what you think, feel, when you look at me?”  He paused, thinking back to the man on the L5 resource satellite. The one whose body they’d never find. There was no body  _ to _ find.  Whose sister had once fed him dinner- He stopped again.  

__

Took a deep breath.

__

And another.

__

This was the wrong place and the wrong time and- Hell, it was the wrong fucking  _ life _ to be having this conversation, to be hashing out their fucking  _ feelings _ in the middle of a life-threatening op.

__

But this was also not something he could just let fester like this either.

__

He leaned forward, pressing lips and fingertips to bare skin, feeling the thrum of tension under his hands, the erratic beat of Trowa’s heart.   The worn-smooth beads of his own rosary, a rosary that had been held by hands before his, touched by the only other person who had ever loved him.

The rosary Trowa had evidently been wearing for months.

“I was trying-”

Duo cut him off with a press of teeth against his throat that would probably bruise, and Trowa hissed.  

“I know what you were trying to do, idiot.” He’d been trying,  _ apparently _ , to save Duo from an op he’d been better suited to than Trowa, trying to protect him from this bullshit, and now here Duo was, waist deep and sinking, and it was no fucking wonder Trowa had been so goddamn unapproachable since Duo had arrived.

Not that that was any kind of excuse, or mollified Duo in any way.

But.

It bore some consideration.  Deserved some conversation. But they couldn’t have that, not here and not now.

The walls had ears, probably, and they couldn’t even talk to one another, not really.

Trowa knew that better than he did, at this point.  Had been swimming in the sewage of this fucked up hellhole for far longer than Duo had.

“I’m not some goddamn-” Another pause as Duo fought with himself, with what was safe to say and what was implied with his words.  “I don’t need that from you. I don’t want it.”

“I want...” This time, it was Trowa who paused, and Duo looked up, meeting his eyes. The other man swallowed audibly. Shook his head.  Leaving whatever it was unspoken.

Duo stopped trying to talk.  Stopped trying to use words to communicate.  Just reached for Trowa’s clothes, baring skin he hadn’t seen in months, fingers grabbing, grasping, and there was the edge of a barely-healed wound, and here, ink he didn’t recognize.

Later.  

Later, there would be time for inspection and reacquaintance, for cataloging what had changed and what was the same.

Now was just Trowa.  Trowa’s skin. Trowa’s hair. Trowa’s smell. Trowa’s taste.

Just Trowa.

Because Duo was still mad.  So, so mad. Too mad for gentle, and too mad for easy, and he should probably be taking his time, savoring the experience, but he was just too skin-hungry and too affection-starved, and too  _ everything _ .

He pushed Trowa down, flush against the bed, pulling impatiently at the pants he’d worn in, the underwear beneath them, manhandling Trowa until Duo was crouched above him and panting, both of them naked and hard, and Duo should be being gentler but he just.  Could. Not.

Not that Trowa seemed to mind, arching into the rough touches and making a sound in the back of his throat that Duo had been dreaming about for months.

They hadn’t agreed to monogamy.  It was an absurd thought, for two people who spent most of their lives undercover and trying not to think of the person they’d left behind.  But Duo knew, from past experience, how hard it was to have a person you didn’t trust in your bed. Maybe they were there for stress relief or to get intel from for an op, or maybe because they’d been foisted off on you and you didn’t know what the hell else to do with them.

But trust was something else, and it had been over a year since either of them had anyone they could trust, could relax into, in their bed, and it was this thought that forced Duo to slow down to something a little less than the speed of light.

That, and the realization that he wasn’t sure they had anything to facilitate the kind of sex they were hurtling towards.

Trowa seemed to read his mind, and jerked his head towards the discarded pile of clothes.  

“Front right pocket.”

Duo leaned over the edge of the bed, snagging the pants and digging in the aforementioned pocket, pulling out several condoms and a standard size tube of lubricant.  He almost laughed. Would have, if his emotions had allowed for humor rather than frustration and anger and lust and  _ need _ .

Apparently, Trowa had been feeling ambitious.

He dropped the condoms onto the bed next to them and leaned back in, his mouth mapping Trowa’s chest as he fumbled too much lube out onto his fingers.  Trowa smelled of the same soap he always used, a weird contrast in their current circumstances, mingling with scent of hot metal and gunpowder, the combination turning Duo on even more.

He’d never claimed he didn’t have weird kinks.

He reached down, bypassing the weeping erection with a mental note to see just how far he could fit it down his throat later, to press against the entrance below.

Trowa groaned, arching into him, and Duo pressed first one, then two fingers in, and he knew he was going too fast, unable to stop himself, especially with Trowa making no indication that he wanted him to slow down. That he wasn’t just as desperate for this as Duo was.  Three fingers, and it was perfunctory at best, but the feel of Trowa’s body clamping down around him, the small noises he was making, all of it was destroying Duo from the inside-out.

And part of him wanted both of them to feel it tomorrow, to remember just what they’d done, to have the physical reminder, because he was certain this was only round one.  Short and sweet to take the edge off - time for something more languorous later.

When his fingers were sliding easily in and out, and Trowa was tugging at him, Duo leaned back to reach for one of the condoms, tearing it open with his teeth and rolling it on.  He was positioned, poised on the edge and looking down at Trowa.

There was a moment of breathless anticipation, and Duo tried not to remember how long it had been.

Too long.

“Ok?” 

Trowa rolled his eyes, and it was so much the man he was used to that Duo grinned.

And slid home in one smooth, burning glide.

Trowa gasped and then groaned, clenching Duo’s hips.

When he shifted from gripping to tugging, Duo moved.

And oh  _ god, _ it was nothing but heat and tightness and his face buried in Trowa’s shoulder, the real Trowa, not some figment of his imagination or his mind desperately pretending, and Duo was breathing in his scent and it was devastating in all the most crucial ways, Trowa shuddering underneath him and Duo snapping his hips.

Trowa reached up to grab the disheveled hair coming loose from the knot he’d tied it in, sliding his hands close to the roots, and _ pulled.  _

Duo gasped, and then they were fucking in earnest, Trowa’s knees over his elbows and the headboard rattling, and neither one of them making more noise than was strictly necessary.  The only sound in the room was the echo of the creaking mattress and slapping skin, punctuated by the low, raw noises of its occupants. Not quite silence, and not quite noise, and somewhere in the back of his mind Duo made a mental note to turn some music on next time.

He came first, buried so far in Trowa’s body he didn’t know where Trowa ended and he began. His fingers dug into Trowa’s thighs hard enough to bruise, and part of him was gleeful at the idea of marking Trowa as  _ his _ as he stuttered and panted, eyes clenched shut against his will.

When he could breathe again, Duo reached between them, but he barely touched the other man before he was coming too, back arched and muscles straining as Duo watched.

The sight was almost enough to give him the impetus for round two.

Almost.

They collapsed onto the narrow bed, some maneuvering required until they could both be semi-comfortable, Trowa wiping cum off his chest with a discarded t-shirt, and then Duo was tucked up against him, closest to the door, bracketing Trowa in between his body and the wall.  

Duo could work with this, as long as Trowa kept his head out of his ass this time.  

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations: 
> 
> La mujer: boss lady (Spanish)  
> tigryenok: Tiger (Russian)  
> Mira qué cabrón! : “Don’t be a smart ass!” (Spanish)   
> Payaso, eso que ni qué. : “Clown, there’s no doubt about that.” (Spanish) This doesn’t translate directly to English very well, but basically he’s telling Trowa he’s a dumbass.  
> Familia: family (Spanish)


	7. Big River

__

_ Now I taught the weeping willow how to cry _

_ And I showed the clouds how to cover up a clear blue sky. _

_ -Johnny Cash _

* * *

 

Trowa woke up suddenly, disoriented, heart racing and eyes snapping wide open as he held himself perfectly still.

He had learned, a very long time ago, not to make a sound when he woke - not to move until he knew it was safe to do so.

And right now, he felt a creeping sensation of doubt, the knowledge that he wasn’t where he should be.

It was dark, a soft, cool breeze floating in through an open window and carrying the scent of charcoal and  lemon trees to Trowa’s nose.

The hacienda.

But Trowa wasn’t in his room, certainly wasn’t in his bed, and he wasn’t alone.

A warm, firm, naked body was pressed against his back, curled against him protectively, a possessive hand fitted over Trowa’s hip, and Trowa was sure he was still asleep, sure he was dreaming.

And then his brain finally caught up, and he remembered in vivid, visceral detail the events of the day before. Events that had led him to Duo’s bed.

His face felt stiff and swollen, and there was a pleasant ache through most of his body - probably more from their fight than from the sex that had followed it - but the slight pain was grounding, was real, and made Trowa feel almost sane for the first time in nearly a year.

Trowa reached down for Duo’s hand and knitted his fingers through the other man’s, and then pulled Duo’s hand higher, over his chest, and Trowa tried to close his eyes and fall back asleep, tried to take comfort in Duo’s presence, in the steady drum of his heartbeat and the tickle of his hair against the back of Trowa’s neck.

Duo was here, had managed to salvage Trowa’s utter loss of control that afternoon with a not-at-all fake suggestion of pent-up sexual attraction, and now… Trowa had made sure he wasn’t seen, when he came to Duo’s room hours ago, but that didn’t mean people wouldn’t know. He was sure there were security cameras throughout the hacienda, and had had to spend the last year actively  _ not _ trying to position himself in likely blind spots.

Nothing stayed a secret at the hacienda. If they didn’t know already, soon everyone would know that Trowa had spent the night in Duo’s bed and- 

And what happened next? 

Trowa knew that, realistically, it was safer for him to leave, maybe convince Duo to let it be known how unimpressed he was with Trowa’s prowess and-

“Stop,” Duo growled, voice rough with sleep.

“What?”

“Whatever the fuck it is you’re thinking about, stop.” Duo shifted against him, throwing one leg over both of Trowa’s. “Just stop.”

Trowa huffed in irritation.

“This is a bad idea, Duo. We should-”

“Don’t you fucking  _ dare _ .” Duo’s voice was sharp and low, the words hot on Trowa’s shoulder. “Don’t you  _ dare _ push me away again.”

Trowa swallowed hard, and then sighed.

He had learned, the hard way, that there were very few things that set Duo Maxwell off. The man who had spent most of his life associating himself with death had a surprisingly firm hand on his temper, but one sure way to make him furious was Trowa  _ being a fucking idiot _ , in Duo’s opinion.

And he was using the tone of voice that indicated that that was exactly what he thought Trowa was doing.

Trowa tried to roll over, towards Duo, but the other man was ahead of him, pulling Trowa onto his back and moving to straddle him, rising up above him in the darkness, bracketing Trowa’s body between his thighs and glaring down at him.

“If you think, for one second, that I’m going to let you just walk out of here and go back to ignoring me, you’re dumber than I ever gave you credit for.”

“Duo-”

“ _ Trowa _ . Get your head out of your ass. We talked about this. I’m  _ here _ . I’m in it. Stop trying to push me away or- or whatever the fuck it is you’re doing,” Duo added in a low, furious whisper.

“So, what, we’re fine now? We’re going to walk out of this room and start holding hands?”

Duo ran a hand through his own hair in frustration.

“No, of fucking course not. But- Why the fuck won’t you just let me-”

Trowa knew what Duo was about to say.

_ Let me help you _ .

Words that he absolutely couldn’t hear, and that Duo shouldn’t risk saying out loud.

“As if anyone has ever been able to  _ stop _ you from doing exactly what you want,” Trowa interrupted.

Duo drew in a breath, nodding, accepting the warning and the save.

“Tell me you don’t want me, then,” Duo said after a moment of silent consideration. “Tell me you haven’t thought about this,” he rolled his hips over Trowa’s groin, “since the moment you saw me.”

Duo could just be talking about sex, certainly made it  _ sound _ as if he was just talking about sex, but the look on his face made it clear this wasn’t just sex, made it clear that he was offering Trowa so much more than that.

Which was the problem.

Because  _ more _ than that meant letting Duo in, it meant letting Duo see just how far Trowa had gone to achieve so very little. It meant Duo seeing just how fucked up things were, how fucked up  _ he _ was, and Trowa knew… He knew he had crossed too many lines, had strayed so far off the path that Duo would see it too.

“Duo-”

The other man grabbed his left hand, turning it so that Trowa was looking at his own palm, at the tattoos on the underside of his forearm.

“Remember this?” Duo asked, thumb resting just under the words tattooed at the base of Trowa’s hand.

_ Til Death _ .

Duo had gotten the lion, that night, and Trowa had had those words inked into his skin, had been breathless with tension and doubt while Duo looked over the shiny ink, and then had felt a rush of adrenaline and relief when Duo’s lips quirked upwards in his familiar, lopsided grin. 

“Yes,” the word left Trowa’s mouth in a rush as he tried to stifle all of his emotions and memories.

“Do you still mean it?”

“Duo-”

“Do you still mean it?”

Trowa closed his eyes.

_ Why was Duo so fucking stubborn? _

“Yes,” he repeated the word.

“Then let  _ me _ .” Duo leaned down. “Let me do this with you, Trowa.” He said the words against Trowa’s cheek, lips grazing over Trowa’s skin.

Trowa turned his head, just enough so that his lips brushed against Duo’s, and it was far closer to begging than he wanted to admit, but Duo accepted it, fitting his mouth to Trowa’s and kissing him until they were both panting, until all Trowa could think about was the feel of Duo in his arms.

From somewhere on the floor, Trowa’s phone squawked, the loud, obnoxious alarm that signalled an incoming message.

Duo growled into Trowa’s mouth, pressing him farther back on the bed, but Trowa shifted, wrapping one arm around Duo to keep him from spilling to the floor, and tried to reach for the phone.

He managed to find the leg of his pants, and he tugged them closer until he could actually reach into the back pocket and pull out the phone.

Trowa reluctantly pulled away from Duo.

“Someone better be fucking dead. Or they’re about to be,” Duo said as Trowa pulled up his recent messages.

His stomach dropped.

**_CARGO INBOUND. ETA 2 HOURS. SECURE THE LZ._ **

“We’ve got work to do,” he told Duo.

The other man glanced at the phone, and his lips tightened into a thin, angry line. But then he turned to Trowa, tilting Trowa’s chin up so that their eyes met.

“Yeah,” Duo said, “ _ we _ do.”

Trowa swallowed hard and nodded.

Duo favored him with that same lopsided grin, the one that made Trowa momentarily forget his own name. But there was a dark edge to it, Shinigami, and  _ that _ made Trowa’s pulse race.

He dropped the phone to the bed and put his hands on either side of Duo’s face and pulled him close.

Their lips met in a kiss that was hard, was nearly bruising with the force they both exerted, and by the time Duo broke free with a ragged gasp, they were both hard, chests heaving, and the absolute last thing Trowa wanted to do was move.

“That wasn’t fucking fair, Barton,” Duo growled, and leaned forward, clearly intent on taking this to its natural conclusion. “Don’t start something you can’t finish.”

Trowa groaned as Duo ground against him, the friction and force against his cock the best kind of torture.

What was fifteen more minutes?

Hell, they didn’t even need that much time.

But Trowa wanted it, wanted much more, but he would take what he could get.

He moved his hands down Duo’s shoulders, over his back and to his waist, holding him steady as Trowa shifted, holding him even as he flipped Duo onto his back on the bed.

Duo chuckled and nipped at Trowa’s jaw.

“Show off,” he muttered, and then groaned when Trowa wrapped one hand around his cock, squeezing slightly as he stroked from root to tip.

Duo pulled Trowa’s face back to his to kiss him, and Trowa drank him in, savoring the feel, the taste, of the man he had dreamed about for a year. He continued to work his hand over Duo’s length, and the other man shifted under him, hips bucking up to meet the movements.

Trowa greedily swallowed the soft, slight growls of pleasure Duo made, and then pulled away so that he could look down at Duo.

The other man’s eyes fixed on his, and it didn’t matter that it was dark, didn’t matter that Trowa had an ocean of hell between himself and the other man. In that moment, they were connected. In that moment, nothing else mattered, and there was nothing Trowa cared about more.

Duo kissed him again, softer this time, lips a caress over his, tongue gliding over his in a way that made Trowa shudder, and then Duo shifted, trailing kisses over Trowa’s cheek and to his ear, laving at the sensitive lobe and finding the spot that always made Trowa gasp.

Duo chuckled when he earned the reaction from Trowa, hoarse and erotic, and Trowa decided not to let that stand.

He shifted down Duo’s body, licking and nipping at his skin, mapping the body he knew so well, eliciting gasps and hisses as he found all of his favorite spots.

And then he arrived at Duo’s groin, at the erection that jutted out, demanding attention.

Trowa held Duo’s eyes as he swept his tongue over the head of Duo’s cock, smearing the precum there.

Duo drew in a sharp breath and his hips surged upwards, barely stayed by Trowa’s hands moving to hold him in place.

“Fuck,” Duo groaned as Trowa traced down the underside and then around the base before returning to the head.

Slowly, Trowa took Duo’s length into his mouth, tongue teasing, teeth just barely scraping, and Duo struggled to remain still, to let Trowa-

There was a knock on the door.

“Fuck off!” Duo called out, and then paused. “Or fuck off, please,  _ ma’am _ .”

Trowa grinned around his mouthful, still working to swallow Duo.

“We’re looking for Trowa.” It was Matvei, and he sounded equal parts hesitant and irritated.

“He’s fucking busy,” Duo growled, and Trowa choked on a laugh.

“We need to head out to the airfield and-”

Duo made a strangled, frustrated sound in the back of his throat.

“I’m going to fucking kill him, Tro,” he said, voice low and deadly serious.

Trowa reluctantly released Duo, pausing to give one last teasing swipe of his tongue before he moved back up to kiss Duo.

“Get in line,” he said, and then crawled off of Duo and the bed to start rooting around for his clothes.

There was another knock on the door.

“Give us a goddamn minute.” Duo’s voice brooked absolutely no argument, and Trowa imagined that Matvei and whoever else was out there likely took a step - or a few - backwards at the tone.

He found himself smirking as he pulled on his pants. Duo caught the look, dressing himself, and rolled his eyes.

Duo picked up his shirt, the one that Trowa had used to wipe himself clean with earlier, and grimaced. He tossed it Trowa’s way, but Trowa ducked it with a smirk. Duo muttered something under his breath as he rooted through his bureau for another shirt.

Trowa sat down on the bed to put on his socks and shoes and find his phone in the tousled sheets.

As he stood back up, Duo, fully dressed, handed him his shirt.

Before Trowa could put it on, Duo wrapped one hand around his neck and pulled him down for one last kiss.

“This isn’t over,” he said.

“It better not be,” Trowa agreed.

Duo grin was fierce as he stepped away and yanked his door open.

Sure enough, Matvei and the other two enforcers with him were pressed against the opposite wall, eyes darting from the clearly furious Duo to Trowa as he pulled his shirt over his head. 

Matvei looked comically shocked.

“Pick your jaw off the floor,” Trowa suggested, and Matvei closed his mouth with an audible  _ clack _ of teeth.

Trowa kept his face neutral, but Duo, shocking no one, had the bad grace to laugh. He took a step closer to Matvei, and Trowa could see him flinch, could see him shift his injured arm farther away.

“The next time you interrupt me when I’m getting phenomenal head, you and I are going to have words,” he promised, and then he sized up the other two enforcers. “Who’s driving?”

Javier, one of the younger enforcers that Anhil had recruited after Alessandra’s coup, raised his hand tentatively.

“Toss me the keys, then,” Duo commanded.

Javier darted a look to Trowa, who nodded.

“Let him drive. If he doesn’t kill us, he’ll get us there quicker than anyone else could.”

Duo’s grin was feral as he caught the keys and pocketed them.

“Shall we?” he asked with a dramatic sweep of his hand.

Trowa followed him out of the room, but it wasn’t until he was sliding into the front passenger seat that he let himself focus on the reality that waited for them at the airfield.

The reality of Trowa having Duo assist him in processing L3 colonials, drug mules who were soon to become something even worse and more hopeless, men and women who were suffering a fate both Duo and Trowa had only escaped by dumb luck.

-o-

Everything went perfectly according to plan until Matvei couldn’t resist fucking with Duo.

The cargo shuttle arrived right on time, and in the dead of night, with the airfield lights cut and only the lights of the trucks and the shuttle to illuminate the area, they managed to process every single  _ palomnik _ without incident. 

Duo, stone-faced, PP-2000 dangling idly from his shoulder strap, stood beside the shuttle hatch with Haverford while the accountant checked off the names of the arriving colonials against the manifest that had left L3.

Trowa stayed far away from him, tried his level best not to look at him, and so positioned himself near the trucks, loading the  _ palomniks _ into them, looking at their tired, frightened faces as he handed them up.

Each touch, each hand he pressed or sobbing breath he heard, was like chiseling off another layer of himself, leaving him sick and raw and  _ afraid _ to look at Duo while Duo drove them to the lumber mill, leading the convoy of trucks through the windy roads.

Duo’s driving was always fast. He always took curves sharp, and treated potholes like personal challenges. Tonight was no different, but Duo’s face was pale and tight, the smirk on his face fixed.

At the lumber mill, Matvei stumbled out of the Jeep looking a little green, and the glint in his eyes as he took in Duo’s sullen expression were warning enough for Trowa.

He moved to step between them, sliding behind Duo as they walked back to the trucks to start unloading.

“Hey,  _ jefe _ ,” Matvei called, his tone sarcastic, “who’s gonna pull the drugs today? Cuz I’ve already done it, and Javier had to do it last time, and you’ve done it, and so have all the other  _ chapos _ .”

Trowa knew exactly what he was getting at, and he was absolutely not going to let it happen.

“Which means you know how to do it right. And you’ve still got one good hand, don’t you?” Trowa snarled at him.

Matvei glowered, but he wisely kept his mouth shut.

Javier, however, was young and dumb.

“Doesn’t seem fair, though. Any  _ pendejo _ can pull a bag out.”

Trowa clenched his jaw.

That wasn’t, strictly speaking, true. During the second shipment Trowa had ever processed, one of the enforcers, Juan, hadn’t been paying attention, and he had punctured the bag. It hadn’t been a pleasant death. For either the  _ palomnik _ or for Juan, who Salome had beaten nearly to death with a stiletto boot before Anhil finally shot him and told Trowa to bury him.

Javier had been present for that. So had Matvei.

Looking at them now, it was clear both men were thinking about it, cruel edges to their smirks.

Duo rolled his shoulders, and Trowa could see him considering it, weighing the dangers of ignoring the taunt.

“It’s not like you haven’t gotten your hands dirty before,” Matvei added.

Trowa whirled on him, furious and ready to continue their fight from earlier, but Duo’s hand shot out, grabbing his arm and holding him back.

“That’s true,” Duo agreed, voice low, “but you’ve got no idea just where my hands have been,  _ wey _ . I saw Trowa beat the shit out of you earlier, so maybe your brain’s a bit fucked up right now.”

Matvei registered the reminder and the clear threat, and he stood down, face flushed and eyes darting between Trowa and Duo as he finally seemed to realize that he was facing a united front.

“I’ll do it,” Duo said into the chilled, tense silence. 

“Duo-”

“ _ Jefe _ , unless you wanna do it yourself, I’m doing it,” Duo growled, and then stormed off.

Trowa spared Matvei and Javier one last glare, and then turned to follow him.

It had been a smaller shipment, only 124  _ palomniks _ , but by the time Duo pulled the last condom filled with carfentanil from the last colonial, the sun had risen, casting their activities with the harsh light of day.

Trowa assigned the watch rotation - Matvei and Javier on the first eight-hour rotation, and he sincerely hoped they fell asleep or fucked up so he would have the chance to do something about it - and then he climbed back into the Jeep with Duo to drive back to the hacienda.

They were alone, but Duo tore across the windy back roads with such ferocity that all Trowa could do was hang on and wonder if this was how he would die.

When they got back, Duo parked and reached for the keys.

Trowa stopped him, grabbing Duo’s hand before he could pull them out of the ignition.

“Duo.”

“Tro,” he growled, not meeting Trowa’s eyes.

This. This was what Trowa hadn’t wanted. This was why he had insisted on being sent on the op.  _ This _ was the nightmare he had wanted to spare Duo from.

In a lot of ways, their childhoods had been similar, and both of them had grown up knowing that survival meant doing whatever it took to stay alive. But growing up in a mercenary group, where grown men fucked and got high and murdered for money was very different than growing up on the streets where children were forced to do all of those same things, where  _ Duo _ had done enough of those things - too many of those things.

And now, he had spent four hours pulling bags full of drugs from the rectums of colonials who were being trafficked into slavery.

Trowa didn’t even know what to say. He had no comfort for the other man, and besides, Duo would sooner punch him than accept an apology or anything like that.

He squeezed their joined hands, and a moment later, Duo sighed and squeezed back.

“We should go inside before someone notices we’re out here holding hands,” Duo said.

Trowa let him go, burying the hurt and frustration he felt at Duo pushing him away so abruptly. He was, after all, right.

It was still early in the morning, but Anhil was awake, leg propped on a cushion, sitting on the couch and with a computer in his lap.

He looked up at their entrance.

“What did you do with the other  _ chapos _ ?” Anhil asked, joking, but with an undertone of trepidation in his voice.

“02 drives like a bat out of hell. They’ll be here soon,” Trowa explained. “Matvei and Javier have the first watch.”

Anhil nodded and looked both of them over, dark eyes impossible to read.

“ _ Las damas _ want to see you,” he finally said.

Duo rolled his shoulders in a move that was somewhere between a shrug and a stretch.

“Am I allowed to shower first?” he asked.

Anhil smirked.

“You don’t have to get yourself pretty for them,  _ lisichka _ .”

A muscle in Duo’s jaw jumped, but he shrugged again and stalked down the hall that led to Alessandra’s office.

Anhil gave Trowa a meaningful look.

“What?” he asked.

Anhil smirked.

“You two work well together,  _ manito _ , just like I said you would.”

Trowa rolled his eyes.

“Smug doesn’t suit you,” he growled.

Anhil’s laugh followed him down the hall and into Alessandra’s office, where Duo was being gestured into a chair by Salome.

Trowa took the chair beside him, and couldn’t help but feel a little resentful of how rested and  _ clean _ both Salome and Alessandra looked.

Then again, he didn’t think a lifetime of showers would make him feel clean again.

“You did good work today,” Alessandra said, leaning back in the leather chair behind her desk and regarding them with a slight, pleased smile. As if they were precocious children or well-behaved pets.

But they were neither, and the tension radiating off of Duo was making Trowa remember when they  _ were _ children, when they piloted giant machines of death, when they had been stupid enough to think they could save humanity.

“Yeah? Did Matvei also tell you that I caught his fuck-up when some of the  _ palomniks _ managed to hide in the trucks at the lumber mill?”

Duo had kept count, as he pulled the bags out of them, and he had been the one to glare when Trowa said that was the last one, had insisted there were still two more to go. Trowa had found the two girls in one of the trucks, buried under a pile of filthy blankets, whimpering and crying. 

“Haverford informed us that you were particularly useful,” Alessandra said.

Trowa blinked in surprise.

Duo had been guessing, he was sure, when he suggested Matvei had been  _ la mujer’s _ spy that night. But Alessandra had corrected him, had given him information that she hadn’t had to.

He had known that Alessandra liked Duo, was amused by him and pleased with his competence. He even knew that Salome enjoyed the way that Duo’s very presence set so many of the  _ chapo’s _ teeth on edge.

But she was making it very clear that she trusted Duo, and Trowa. 

More than she had before.

Trowa risked glancing at Salome, and was disconcerted to find the blonde-haired woman’s icy gaze already on him.

“You will continue to do the shipments,” Alessandra decided. She waved a hand. “And yes, we will give you your  _ bonus _ pay and your days off.” Her smile turned sharp. “So long as you continue to do your other work to our standards.”

Duo leaned back in his chair.

“Fine. When do I get my first day off?”

Salome smirked.

“When do you want it,  _ lisichka _ ?”

Duo pushed his bangs out of his eyes and turned to Trowa with a smirk.

“What are you doing tomorrow?”

Trowa was taken aback by the question, and felt a few seconds of panic.

He had a meet scheduled with Zechs tomorrow night. Duo didn’t know, couldn’t have known - although he certainly knew that Trowa was still periodically watching the damn clown pornography.

“I’m going to the races in San Benito,” he said. “Why? You want to come with me?”

Duo’s smirk was like a knife.

“Me? I’m not much of a gambler.” Everyone in the room laughed at that. “Take me surfing in the morning.”

Trowa snorted.

“It’s April.”

“And it’s ninety degrees outside. What, you afraid of a little cold?”

As it happened, Trowa  _ was _ afraid of a little cold, which Duo well knew.

“Run along,” Alessandra sighed. “And make your plans on your own time. But,  _ lisichka _ , we need to discuss your little gift for the Snakeheads later, hmm?”

Duo nodded, and he and Trowa made their escape from the office.

The other man started down the hall towards the living quarters, and Trowa tentatively followed him.

Duo paused beside his door, and Trowa, several feet away, stopped and looked at his tense back warily.

“Duo?”

“I need to shower. And I need a fucking nap. We’ll talk later,” Duo said, not even looking over his shoulder at Trowa before he opened his door, stepped into the room, and closed the door behind himself.

He stared at the closed door for a moment, feeling inept and furious, but then he noticed Veta, the  _ palomnik _ who had outlasted all of the others who normally took Salome’s fancy, at the end of the hall.

She arched one perfect eyebrow at him and then sauntered away.

Trowa felt like hitting something.

It was a shame he had given Matvei the first watch, because punching the wall in his own room wasn’t nearly as satisfying as it would have been to hit that idiot again.

-o-

  
  


The next day dawned distressingly bright, the sky a cloudless blue above the trees encircling the compound, and Trowa reluctantly rose from his bed and showered.

He had showered last night, had scrubbed his skin until it felt raw and the water had grown cold.  His normal routine.

That morning, however, the shower was quick and perfunctory, more an attempt to wake himself up and clear his head than a futile attempt to feel  _ clean _ .

Afterwards, he dressed in shorts and a t-shirt and a battered pair of sneakers that had somehow managed to escape any blood stains after all of this time.

Trowa cautiously knocked on Duo’s door, a sharp rap of his knuckles one, twice, and then gave up when he heard nothing from within the room. He wasn’t enough of an idiot to try forcing his way in.

Instead, he made his way downstairs to the kitchen. This early, and after the late night of work, the common areas were blessedly silent and empty.

The kitchen, however, was occupied by none other than Duo.

It was oddly reminiscent of that time weeks ago, when Trowa had walked in and Duo had been eating an apple, when Trowa had begged Duo to leave him alone.

He fought aside the sense of deja vu as he made himself a cup of coffee.

The silence felt drawn and brittle by the time Trowa finally turned around and looked at the other man. There were faint shadows under his eyes, and his smirk looked worn around the edges.

“Sleep well?” he asked, as neutrally as he could.

Duo snorted, and his eyes raked over Trowa’s face, searching for something.

“You mean without your bony ass in my bed trying to steal all the blankets?”

Trowa shrugged one shoulder, wondering if Duo was challenging him.

“Not really, no,” Duo admitted to the obvious.

Trowa nodded, but wasn’t entirely sure what to say. He knew that feeling all too well.

After a moment, Duo sighed and reached into the bowl of fruit on the counter in front of him. He tossed an apple in Trowa’s direction, sending it in a lazy, looping arc.

Trowa caught it easily.

“Ready to surf?” Duo asked him as he threw away his own apple core.

“No,” Trowa answered honestly. “It’s going to be freezing.”

Duo snorted.

“It’s barely 8am, and it’s already ninety degrees, Tro. You’re going to be fine.”

Trowa knew better than to argue the point, so instead, he finished his coffee, set the empty mug in the sink, and followed Duo out of the kitchen.

He tossed Duo the keys to the Jeep without Duo asking, and as Duo started to drive, Trowa settled into the passenger seat and ate his apple.

There was music playing, something on a local station, some kind of  _ ranchera _ music that Trowa could only half follow.

Things were somewhere between comfortable and tense, teetering on a balance point, and Trowa was afraid to push things one way or another. 

Duo drove them towards the coast, away from downtown Mazatlan and further south. 

While the tropical temperatures meant that tourists visited the area year-round, the beaches were relatively empty, Trowa couldn’t help but notice. He didn’t point that out, however. After all, Duo had eyes.

Eventually, Duo pulled into the parking lot of a run-down motel that had a netted cache of worn-looking surfboards leaning against a storage shed.

Trowa arched an eyebrow at first the motel and then Duo.

“We can rent some boards,” Duo explained.

“Or we could rent a room,” Trowa suggested.

Duo gave him a look, half-considering, half-aggravated.

But then he muttered something in Spanish, something about the water, and Trowa decided not to push it.

Instead, he followed Duo into the manager’s office and leaned against the wall as Duo, charming smile on his face, negotiated for two surfboards.

Trowa could follow enough of the conversation to know that the manager thought they were insane, but the flash of hard currency allayed his concerns, and he cheerfully pocketed the cash and led them to the surfboards.

Smirking, Duo tucked his board under one arm and started across the street, towards the beach.

Trowa rolled his eyes and grabbed the other board from the manager.

He heard the man mutter something that sounded a  _ lot _ like  _ estúpidos chicos blancos. _

In complete agreement, Trowa jogged a little to catch up to Duo.

The other man had paused a few feet from the water’s edge, dark eyes scanning the water, wind setting his hair to dancing around his face.

“Cold feet?” Trowa suggested.

Duo snorted.

“It’s not that cold,” he muttered.

“Mm. You try it out first, then. I’ll wait here.”

Trowa tossed his own board down onto the sand and sat on it.

Duo looked down at him, shook his head, and then toed off his shoes. He pulled off his shirt and emptied his pockets onto the garment.

Trowa let himself look over Duo’s body, his gaze hungry for the sight.

The familiar tattoos and scars that told the character of the other man had haunted Trowa’s dreams for a year. There was something bittersweet about seeing them now, this close, about knowing he could reach out and touch them.

But then Duo picked up his board and started to sprint towards the water.

Duo splashed through the shallows, board floating at his side, and then dove under a wave just as it broke.

He came up a moment later, and even over the roar of the ocean, Trowa could hear Duo’s shocked, angry cry.

Trowa couldn’t help but smirk as Duo  _ immediately _ started back for the shore.

“It’s fucking freezing!” Duo shouted, a sopping, furious mess as he trudged through the sand and back to Trowa.

“I know,” Trowa said, and managed to finally kill his smirk when Duo stopped in front of him. 

Duo tossed down his board in disgust, lips twisted into a scowl, glaring out at the ocean in betrayal.

Trowa let him sulk for a moment, and then held up his hand.

Duo looked down at him, and Trowa took his hand. 

When Duo didn’t pull away, Trowa pulled Duo down into his lap and situated Duo’s wet back to his front, bending his knees to tuck Duo between his legs.

“Let me warm you up,” he suggested, and nuzzled against Duo’s neck, licking at the saltwater running from his hair in thick rivulets.

Duo shivered, either from the cold or Trowa’s touch, and leaned back into him.

“I just wanted one fucking day,” Duo muttered. “One fucking day for  _ us _ .”

Trowa felt Duo’s disappointment and frustration so keenly that they might have been his own.

Hell, they  _ were _ his own. He felt the same way. 

It was as if the world had conspired against him, as if the world  _ always _ conspired against them. As if they would never be able to simply  _ be _ \- together, at peace - anything. 

Trowa rested his chin on Duo’s shoulder and wrapped his arms around Duo’s chest, keeping his hold loose, offering solidarity.

They sat in silence for a while, long enough for Duo to relax into his embrace and for Trowa to feel the heat of the sun warm his back.

“Remember that time our flight was cancelled in Rome?” Trowa asked. “After we finished the Perfetti op?”

Duo nodded.

“Yeah. Our bags were already loaded, but the weather in Brussels was shit so we rented a car and drove back.”

“And stopped in Aldorf to stay at that inn for the night?” Trowa continued.

Duo snorted a laugh at the memory.

“You told the innkeeper we were on our honeymoon.”

Trowa smirked against Duo’s hair.

“I wanted the best room.”

“Well, we got it. Jesus, fuck, remember that bathtub? It was like the size of our apartment back home.”

“The bed was a decent size, too,” Trowa reminisced.

“The fireplace was nice,” Duo’s voice was softer. 

The fireplace had been nice. They had sat in front of it, late into the night, curled together in the same position they sat now, looking into the flames and determinedly  _ not _ talking about the op they had just finished, and the ops that had come before that, or the ops that they would go on in the future. 

“We had that day,” Trowa said, voice almost lost on the wind.

“Yeah,” Duo agreed, and turned enough in Trowa’s arms to press a kiss to his lips, “we had that day.”

-o-

Anhil had taken Trowa to the races, his first time.

Had dragged Trowa down there to act as muscle while Anhil roughed up a jockey who had, according to Salome, gained weight and ruined her day - and lost her several thousand dollars - because of his  _ fat ass _ .

Trowa hadn’t cared for horse racing before that day. Certainly didn’t have any positive feelings towards it after.

He hadn’t been surprised when Zechs had named it as the place for their next meet - after all, baseball season was over, and Zechs seemed to have a particular talent for setting Trowa up to be, at the least, uncomfortable.

Which was why Trowa so often went out of his way to return the favor.

As he and Duo stood in the line at one of the food trucks set up just yards away from the dirt track and the rows of dilapidated wooden bleachers, Trowa considered just how best to offend his handler.

“Hot dogs?” Duo mused.

Trowa shook his head.

“I did that last time.” Trowa smirked as he remembered the expression on Zechs’s face. “He looked ready to vomit.”

Duo smirked, a cruel edge to the expression.

It had been Heero who discovered - and divulged - the intel that Zechs was a fastidious eater, that Zechs had looked caught between an aneurysm and nausea as he watched Heero slurp noodles. Heero, of course, had only slurped louder, had let some of the noodles slip from his mouth and fall back into the bowl, had chewed the vegetables in the noodle bowl loudly and with his mouth open. Zechs had stormed out of the restaurant.

Wufei had reported similar success after ordering some kind of barbecued tofu, had been disgusted himself as he slathered the sauce all over his own lips and chin. But, he had added with a smirk and a glimmer in his dark eyes, it had been worth it.

Not to be left out, Duo and Trowa had joined in the game. Even Quatre,  _ once _ , had had a lunch meeting with Zechs and ordered mousse for dessert, and had, for perhaps the only time in his life, eaten messily.

Since Trowa had the dubious pleasure of having been assigned Zechs as his more or less permanent handler, he interacted with their former enemy the most. And Duo, who was assigned on his own long-term ops and, luckily, had Sally as his handler, engaged with the blond-haired man the least.

He had, predictably and not at all disappointingly, insisted on accompanying Trowa to the meet.

“Nachos,” they decided at the same moment, sharing a dark, satisfied grin with each other.

They decided to split one, drowning the corn chips in so many layers of salsa, cheese, beans, guacamole and shredded beef that Trowa wasn’t even sure there  _ were _ chips under the tower.

Duo carried their beers while Trowa balanced the mess. Neither bothered to get napkins before working their way through the crowd.

They stood by the track for a few minutes, casually watching the in-progress race while also scanning the bleachers for Zechs.

“Seven o’clock,” Duo muttered. “What the fuck is on his  _ face _ ?”

Trowa glanced over his shoulder, saw that Zechs’s goatee had grown fuller, a little darker than the rest of his hair, and was every bit as hideous as it had been before.

“I know,” he said, and started to walk towards the bleachers.

“It’s not like he’s got anything else going for him. Why the fuck does he have to ruin his face? I have to  _ look _ at him, for fuck’s sake,” Duo whined as he fell into step just behind Trowa.

“Maybe he thinks it looks good,” Trowa offered.

Duo’s derisive snort made Trowa smirk, an expression that he quickly killed as he and Duo climbed onto the bench beside Zechs, Trowa shoving his thigh up against Zechs’s, forcing himself into the other man’s personal space.

Zechs glared at him, adjusted the baseball cap on his head, and subtly tried to shift away.

Duo bumped his knee against Trowa’s, shoving him closer to Zechs, before reaching for the nachos balanced in Trowa’s lap and digging down for a chip.

Trowa nearly lost control of his own neutral expression when he saw the disgusted horror on Zechs’s face.

Duo somehow maneuvered his handful into his mouth and released a moan of pleasure.

“This is fucking good. Tro, you gotta try one of these.”

Duo reached back for another nacho, fingers dripping with toppings, and held it up to Trowa’s mouth.

Trowa obligingly parted his lips, and Duo nudged the chip into his mouth, using one finger to smear salsa onto his chin.

Zechs made a noise of acute distress as Trowa flicked his tongue out to lick the salsa off.

“Want some?” Duo leaned around Trowa, directly addressing Zechs.

The blond-haired  man glared at him for a moment before his eyes scanned the area around them.

“No one followed us,” Trowa muttered. “And we scanned the crowd before we approached. None of our people are here.”

“Maybe he’s worried about his Preventers backup seeing him act like a fucking human,” Duo offered, mouth full of another helping of chips.

“If you two can bring yourselves to focus on the matter at hand, I’m not interested in playing your little games. We have serious work to do.”

Trowa’s jaw clenched at the unnecessary reminder, and beside him, Duo tensed.

“Oh? Do we? Here I was thinking this was that fucking vacation time I’ve been owed for two years. Tro, you told me this was a holiday. I mean, that’s why we’ve been sitting on our asses by the pool all day, right?”

Hearing Duo voice the words that Trowa couldn’t, hearing his unbanked rage at Zechs’s words and his attitude, were strangely not at all comforting.

It was, in fact, a reminder that Duo should not be here. A reminder that Trowa had failed in the  _ one  _ thing that mattered to him, keeping Duo out of this shit.

“Things are starting to fray at the compound,” Trowa said, earning surprised glances from both men. “Anhil was injured a few weeks ago - I’ve taken over most of his responsibilities, and they’ve shifted Duo to cover some of his work as well. We’re trusted. More now than I was before Duo arrived. Duo’s also been… inspiring tension within the ranks.”

Duo snorted.

“That’s one way of putting it. I’ve also, you know, in between working on my tan and getting pedicures, cooked up the software we need to take down the cartel. And,” Duo paused and picked up a dripping nacho, “just because I’m fucking awesome, I’m also working to take down the Snakeheads. Alessandra’s rivalry with them is going to fuck up our own plans, but it’s an opportunity for us too.”

Trowa nodded in agreement. He didn’t know the details of anything Duo was working on - it was safer that way, for all of them - but he wasn’t surprised that, already, Duo had laid a foundation for the demise of the cartel.

Maybe.

Hopefully.

That was the danger, the reason that no other agencies had been able to take out the organization that had survived for hundreds of years.

Take down one leader, and another rose, often more vicious than the last. Take out one base of operations, and another, more secure and more secret, was built. Take out one supply route, and another would be used.

Trowa still didn’t know who at Preventers had decided to take on the cartel, who had come up with this plan in the first place, even, but he had had his own doubts from the beginning. Doubts that had only been magnified during the course of this op.

The only way to truly bring down the cartel - if such a thing was even possible - was to take out the leadership, the supply of both drugs and humans, and discover and publicly prosecute the buyers. It had to happen in one fell swoop, in one massive op that used the intel that Duo was gathering, that took advantage of the breakdown in operations that Trowa had been working towards. 

Preventers needed to not only get the intel, but to get the leadership, to get the L3 contacts, and to make it as painfully clear as possible to anyone else - anyone wanting to take the cartel’s place, from the Snakeheads to would-be  _ chapos _ \- that it simply wasn’t possible to do business this way anymore.

“I have intel that will impact your operations,” Zechs said, determinedly not looking at Duo as he continued to noisily, messily eat.

The last time Zechs had delivered intel to Trowa, weeks before Duo’s arrival, Trowa had had to throw away his blood-stained clothes after failing to clean them despite twenty minutes of scrubbing the same spot over and over again.

“What?” he asked between gritted teeth.

“A team on L3 has been trailing one of the suppliers. We’re going to seize the next shipment.”

Beside him, Duo sucked in a breath.

“Are you insane?” Trowa hissed. “We’ve  _ just  _ managed to get further into their trust. I said that things were fraying - if you do this, everything could fall apart. Do you know what happened the last time a cargo was seized? Do you have any idea what logic Salome uses when she picks a victim to take her rage out on after something like that? Because I sure as fuck don’t. Duo is the newest member of the crew - the only unknown element. If this goes down, she could-”

“She’s unpredictable, yes, I am aware. That’s a risk we have to take. And your attitude, Barton, makes me question your ability to do your job. Do you know what will happen when we seize that cargo? Two hundred or more innocent civilians will be free. Two hundred or more men and women won’t end their lives in slavery. And that is the entire point of this operation, is it not? To end this sort of barbarism?”

Zechs’s voice was low and cold, beyond annoyed, and instead furious. 

His words sliced into Trowa, and it was all Trowa could do to remain seated, between Zechs’s icy fury on one side and Duo’s nearly incandescent rage on his other.

“We can save two hundred, or we can save two hundred thousand,” Duo said, his words and tone measured and painfully even. “If you do this - if you let this cargo be seized - we risk this entire operation.”

Zechs sneered.

“The matter has been decided. I am not telling you to gather your unnecessary opinions. I am simply informing you. With the new Earthsphere Trade legislation going into effect next month, and the decreased restrictions on travel and cargo shuttles, this might be one of our last opportunities to seize one of the cartel’s shipments. This will only help us. The PR alone will earn-”

“The fucking PR?” Duo breathed, his anger so palpable the words felt like blows. “Do you even fucking hear yourself?”

“Do you hear yourself? Either of you?” Zechs shot back. “You knew the risks when you signed up. This is what you do. This is what  _ we _ do.”

Duo snorted.

“We, huh? Funny, I didn’t see you helping Trowa dig a ditch out behind the tool shed last week to bury those  _ palomniks _ that Salome got tired of. That goatee of yours is better camouflage than I thought.”

Zechs didn’t respond, didn’t even look at Duo.

“Was there anything else?” Trowa asked after watching a horse go down on the track. He watched the jockey cling to the horse’s neck, watched the trainers approaching with slumped shoulders and downcast eyes. 

“Make sure the contingency plans are in place. In case Salome acts out against either of you.”

With those comforting words, Zechs left.

Trowa shoved the nachos into Duo’s hands. He had long ago lost his appetite, but now, just the warm weight of the thing was making his stomach twist.

_ When _ , he wondered,  _ did it become too much? _

Zechs was wrong - the Preventers were wrong. Damn the PR, but saving one cargo of civilians endangered thousands of others.

But.

But who even knew if they could save thousands?

Maybe that one cargo shipment was all that they  _ could _ save. 

Wasn’t it worth it, if just one person escaped the fate that so many couldn’t?

Trowa didn’t know, anymore.

Each day here, logic seemed further away. Morality. Ethics.

What was the value of human life?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:
> 
> Jefe: boss  
> Pendejo: Spanish, literally means pubic hair but is used as ‘asshole’  
> Wey: Spanish, properly quey, it means dude/buddy/mate  
> Las damas: Spanish for the ladies  
> Chapo: Spanish for soldier, specifically in the drug trade  
> La Mujer: Spanish for mother/boss lady  
> Palomnik: Russian for pilgrim. Salome’s term for the L3 colonials  
> Lisichka: Russian for little fox, the feminine version  
> Manito: Spanish slang for brother/bro/my dude  
> estúpidos chicos blancos: Spanish for stupid white boys


	8. Hurt

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remember the tag for non-explicit torture?  
> That's this chapter. Again, it's nothing explicit, but it's there.

_Chapter 7: Hurt_

 

_I wear this crown of thorns_

_Upon my liar's chair_

_Full of broken thoughts_

_I cannot repair_

_-Johnny Cash_

 

* * *

 

Someone was knocking on his door.

 

Duo didn’t look up from the assortment of parts he’d methodically laid out across the small table that he’d rescued from the trash heap after Matvei had scratched it beyond repair trying to sharpen knives.

 

The knock repeated itself, loud and forceful, as though Duo were deaf, or hadn’t heard the first time.

 

“What?” he called, letting the irritation he felt bleed into his voice.  Apparently, they couldn’t take a hint.

 

He’d escaped to his room for silence.  Some time to gather himself, to realign his headspace and carve out some sort of- Well, not peace, but maybe acceptance of his current situation.

 

He and Trowa had finally reached an uneasy truce, a kind of balance that preserved their cover but still gave Duo the opportunity to offer Trowa some support.  Not that the taller man actually _wanted_ that, but whatever.  He’d at least learned to accept it. Which was good, because Duo wasn’t exactly going anywhere.

 

To the rest of the cartel, they were barely more than former rivals, united only for the sake of the cartel and nothing else, who occasionally liked to fuck.

 

In private, their arrangement was significantly different - better, more intimate, more comfortable - but it wasn’t like _home_.  

 

It was fine.  It wasn’t what either of them _wanted_ , but it was enough.  

 

Except for when it wasn’t.

 

Like now.

 

Like forty-five minutes ago, when Trowa had stalked past him on his way to Alessandra’s office, having been summoned by Anhil, when he hadn’t even _acknowledged_ Duo’s raised eyebrow, the question on his face.

 

Like when a half-hour had passed with no word, and then Trowa had stalked back _out,_ slamming his way through the side door of the hacienda, and disappeared onto the grounds.

 

Duo had waited a solid fifteen minutes before he retreated to his room, to his rituals and his privacy.

 

Zechs’s news had pulled the rug out from under them, straining the tentative intimacy they’d found on the beach, and left them both on tenterhooks waiting for word of the impounded shipment, waiting for the fury Alessandra and Salome would rain down on the unsuspecting cartel.

 

It left both of them brittle, strained, and snappish.

 

Another knock at his door caused Duo to draw his breath in sharply as he reached for the grip and slide of his H&K. Trowa jokingly called it his lucky gun, in what felt like another life, another time, where they weren’t undercover every waking minute, fighting to stay alive, and Duo had a borderline unhealthy attachment to the piece. He could - and did - shoot other models, when the situation called for it, but the H&K was his favorite. In fact, he’d once told Trowa that the damn gun _was_ lucky, because he’d shot Heero Goddamn Yuy with it, and that certainly earned it some sort of special prowess.  It was the same gun G had handed him when he’d given him Deathscythe’s access codes, the same unregistered, unremarkable, serial-numbers-long-since-filed-off hunk of metal that he’d used to shoot countless OZ and Alliance officers, and that he’d used as his weapon of choice for over a decade.  

 

The act of disassembling, cleaning, and reassembling it was as crucial to his character as the religious conventions he’d learned from an elderly priest and a young nun - ingrained into him from an impressionable age, though the two things bore nothing else in common, least of all his soul’s salvation.

 

He had just finished snapping the last of the pieces back together, the business end of the gun pointed towards the door, Duo checking the sight alignment, when Javier was stupid enough to open the door without permission.

 

The gun wasn’t loaded, but the other man didn’t know that.

 

“What the fuck do you want?” Duo asked, the pistol unwavering in his grip.

 

Javier swallowed hard, staring at the weapon.  “ _La mujer_ wants to see you,” he croaked, licking his lips.

 

“Fine.  Get out.”

 

Duo trudged downstairs, Javier blessedly nowhere in his sight, to Alessandra’s office, knocking briskly and waiting until he was invited to enter.

 

Inside the room was a man Duo had never seen before.  The snake tattooed on his forearm, reminiscent of similar markings on the gang members Duo had helped Trowa kill not so long ago, made him easily identifiable as a member of the rival organization Alessandra was anxious to eradicate.  The fact that he was gagged and tied to a chair only further cemented his impression.

 

“Ah, zero-two,” Alessandra greeted him, looking especially pleased with herself and putting Duo instantly on guard. She never called him by his pilot designation, not unless she was looking to intimidate or impress.  “So nice of you to join us. Is your little gift for our friends ready?”

 

Duo could only assume she meant the virus he’d been prepping, the one intended to totally disrupt if not destroy the Snakeheads’ entire operation.

 

“Yes.”  He continued to stand just inside the door, tense and waiting.  The room was filled with a sickening combination of fear and anticipation, Anhil in his customary spot near Alessandra’s desk, with his leg still propped on a pillow.  The doctor had brusquely informed him he would need to keep his weight off of it for some time yet, hindering the other man’s ability to do more than instruct Trowa from afar.   Salome looked positively _delighted_ , something else that set Duo’s teeth on edge.

 

Nothing about this was going to turn out well.

 

“This is Jun Li.  He’s going to help us deliver our little present.”

 

The man looked mulish, even behind the gag, his expression fierce.

 

“He don’t look too much like he wants to help us out,” Duo offered with a snort.

 

Alessandra’s smile sharpened.  “Well, zero-three can be very convincing.”

 

Another pilot designation.  All intended to intimidate the Snakehead, to inspire fear.  And that she’d instructed Trowa to coerce his cooperation...  

 

Duo swallowed hard, nodding.  “Undoubtedly,” he said, caution keeping him quiet.

 

“Get one of the others,” Salome demanded after a few moments of silence, Duo wondering what, if anything, to say, “and have him help you take this one outside.”  She jerked her chin at the bound Snakehead, her blonde and pink locks swinging, the color and playfulness of her hair at complete contrast with her vicious personality.

 

Duo turned on his heel and stalked out into the main living area to find Tomas sitting on the couch, a video game controller in his hand and Veta practically sitting in his lap.

 

“You,” he snarled, making the other man jump, “get off your ass and give me a hand.”

 

Tomas nearly vaulted off the couch to follow Duo back down the hall.  Together, they hauled the uncooperative gangbanger out of the back of the _hacienda_ to the shed near the edges of the jungle, the one that even animals avoided.  Depositing him in the single chair bolted to the floor, Tomas left as rapidly as he’d come, looking pale and green under his tan, and very carefully not turning his gaze towards the table near the back of the shed.

 

The one Trowa was currently standing in front of, his back to Duo, shoulders tense.

 

Duo sighed.  

 

Once their ‘guest’ was secured to the chair, Duo moved to the other side of the shed, leaning against the wall near the door.

 

After a moment, he opened the door and looked outside, finding Tomas long-since gone and no one else around.  He nodded in satisfaction, shutting the door.

 

He crossed his arms and ankles, preparing to wait.

 

Trowa turned around, looking grim and ferocious, and startled to find Duo still inside the shed.

 

“Go back to your electronics, _lisichka_ ,” he growled, clearly frustrated.

 

Duo shrugged loosely.  “I’m fine,” he responded, settling against the wall.

 

All the pilots had been trained to resist interrogation.  Duo had spent four years with G, and a significant portion of that had been deeply unpleasant.  He imagined that Trowa’s training, though shorter, had included similar lessons, as had Wufei’s and Heero’s, and probably even Quatre’s, though maybe not to the same extent.  

 

They’d also learned _how_ to interrogate.

 

Duo was no stranger to either side of the equation.  As Trowa knew better than most, considering that one of the times Duo had enjoyed OZ’s hospitality, Trowa had been wearing the organization’s uniform.

 

“ _Pozhaluista_ _,_ ” Trowa begged, and Duo raised both of his eyebrows in surprise.  He opened his mouth to say something, anything, to convince Trowa of his need to stay, his ability to handle it, but before he could, Trowa spoke again.

 

“ _Ya ne mogu smotret', kak ty smotrish' na menya._ ”  The words were harshly spoken, but the look in his eyes was agonized as he pleaded with Duo to go.

 

Duo closed his mouth with a snap, whirling around to leave without a word and shutting the door behind him with force, just shy of a slam.

 

Once outside, he took a deep breath, glancing around at the silent jungle, the blindingly blue sky.  After a moment, he propped himself against the outer wall of the shed in much the same way he’d done inside.

 

Maybe Trowa couldn’t watch him, but neither could Duo leave him here alone.

 

Duo didn’t know how long he stood there, resolutely ignoring the sounds that, while not loud, were impossible to miss coming from the shed, staring out across the grounds, waiting.  Long enough that his knees got stiff and his back started to ache. Long enough that the sun dipped just below the treeline in the beginnings of evening. Long enough that both Javier and Tomas had come out from the house just far enough to see that he was still there, guarding the door, and leave again.  Not close enough to accidentally stumble upon or _hear_ anything their delicate ears couldn’t take.

 

Duo was disgusted by them, most of all.

 

Fucking cowards.

 

When Trowa stumbled out of the shed, he was stone-faced, his lips pressed into a thin line, scrubbing at his hands, though they appeared clean and unblemished.  He rocked to an abrupt halt at the sight of Duo shoving off the wall to meet him.

 

“How long have you been out here?”

 

Duo shrugged.  “Since you threw me out.”

 

Trowa’s face, already drawn impossibly tight, paled.  “What do you _want_ from me?” he hissed, eyes bleak.

 

“Nothing!” Duo exploded finally, in a furious whisper.  “Nothing, I just… fucking want to _be_ here, you moron.  I’m trying to _help_.”

 

“It doesn’t help,” Trowa retorted, keeping his voice as low as Duo’s.  There was no one around, wasn’t likely to be for some time, and there were _certainly_ no cameras in the vicinity of this particular shed.  Alessandra and Salome would want no evidence that it even existed.  Trowa’s voice dropped even lower, though, barely audible. “It doesn’t _help_ to have you here, Duo.  This isn’t… this isn’t what I wanted.”

 

Duo blinked at him.  “Well, tell me what the hell you _do_ want, then!  Fuck!”

 

“I want-”  Trowa reached out, his fingertips hovering just shy of touching Duo’s face, and Trowa looked from his hand, to Duo, then back to his hand, and he let it fall, dropping between them to hang at his side, limp.  “I just want to be with you. With the only person in the world who thinks I’m _good_ .”  The words were bitter, anguished and _awful_ , and they made Duo’s guts twist.

 

Taking a step forward, Duo reached out and took the hand that Trowa had refused to touch him with, stroking his thumb over the palm and looking it over thoughtfully.   He gave it a squeeze and let go, allowing it to fall between them again.

 

Ignoring how much he wanted to keep holding it.

 

To hold it forever.

 

“There was a guy on L5,” Duo began, and his words, now, were clipped and devoid of emotion.  Clinical. “Yong. He was an alright guy. Low on the totem pole, but his sister liked me, y’know?  Thought he was my _friend._ ”  

 

Trowa nodded, his brow furrowed.  

 

Duo took a deep breath.  “He found out something - maybe saw me make a drop, meet a contact, I dunno.”  He shrugged. “Yong confronted me on our next run together, waited until we were alone between hops, bein’ a _pal_ .  Accused me of bein’ _jingcha_.”

 

Trowa’s eyes were wide with understanding.

 

“I spaced him in his sleep.”

 

He watched the knowledge penetrate, watched as Trowa made the connection in his mind, finally seemed to understand something he should have already known.

 

“Neither of us is _good_ , Tro.”  

 

The other man swallowed, hard, as Duo continued.

 

“I just wanna make sure we live through this.  I don’t want - or need - anything but you.” Duo took a step back, waiting for Trowa to nod.

 

When he did, Duo whirled on his heels and strode away, heading back to his room.

 

And his gun.

 

*

 

Duo had enough nightmare fodder to keep him awake for years.

 

But he never slept deeply enough to have any when he was working an op.  It was part of the reason he let Une keep him so busy. If he couldn’t sleep, he couldn’t dream, and if he couldn’t dream, he didn’t revist the faces of the men he’d killed or the children who’d died or the screams he’d heard.

 

Tonight was no different.

 

He’d woken alone, pulse thrumming, the barest edge of panic on his tongue.

 

So, he’d gone for a run.  The guards were used to him by now, and Trowa, asleep in his own bed, in his own room, a few feet that felt like miles away, hadn’t been there to question him. The run hadn’t helped, really, not that it ever did, just gave him an outlet for the adrenaline saturating his system.

 

Despite the exertion, he still wasn’t able to sleep, so after a shower, he was back on his network.  Back to watching endless data scroll across the screen, back to wondering what it would take to finish this op, to get him and Trowa out of it, alive and as whole as they could be after all the shit they’d done.

 

It had been nearly a week since Alessandra had deposited Jun Li back to whatever cesspool she’d found him in.  Or rather, she’d had an associate do so. Jun Li, who had looked bruised and haunted, despite the distinct lack of marks on his body.  Jun Li, who was supposed to deliver Duo’s package to the Snakehead system or risk not only his own life, but that of a variety of close friends and family, which Salome had insisted Duo discover and provide details for.  Details Salome had used to ensure that whatever remaining resistance he might have had following his time with Trowa, Jun Li was going to be imminently cooperative, unless he wanted the people he cared about to spend some quality time with Pilot Zero Three.

 

Trowa hadn’t been quite the same since.

 

Three days later, the latest shipment from L3 had been seized by Preventers authorities, just as Zechs had predicted, and it could not have come at a worse possible time.

 

Salome was indescribably enraged.

 

Then Matvei had made the suggestion that Jun Li had betrayed them, and she’d found a target for her rage.

 

In Trowa.

 

Duo deflected, diverted, did all he could to distract the blonde-haired woman, and Trowa, in turn, did all he could to keep her attention focused on him and not on Duo.  She was convinced Trowa hadn’t done a _good enough job_ of dealing with the Snakehead unfortunate enough to be caught in their grasp.

 

Duo could see that Salome was pulling her little tricks with Trowa.  Had seen her corner him often enough, trapping him in some spot he couldn’t easily leave, or forcing him into conversation, and he never _quite_ heard what exactly it was that she said, but he knew whatever it was, it was doing a number on Trowa.  The other man became increasingly shifty, pale and withdrawn. Started avoiding Duo again, leaving them both stewing in their own frustrations.

 

Trying to draw the blonde-haired woman’s attention to himself, trying to give Trowa some sort of relief, only seemed to increase the green-eyed man’s agitation, causing him to pull further and further away from Duo.

 

It all came to a head just two days later, Duo’s attention wrenched away from his work by the sounds of a muffled slam and shattering glass.

 

Curious, Duo got up from his desk and made his way to the kitchen, looking for the source.  He wouldn’t have bothered if he hadn’t seen Trowa go that direction only a few minutes before.

 

When he walked into the room, Salome was leaning against the counter, and she’d have looked casual if not for the expression on her face.  A mocking, raised-eyebrows ‘oops’ that was as insincere as the coddling tone she took with the _palomniks_ she invited back to the hacienda.  Trowa was cradling his left wrist, his face tight with pain, jaw clenched and lips thin.  There was broken glass scattered across the tile, the fragments reflecting the fiery colors of the sunset burning through the large windows.

 

At first, it had looked like blood.

 

It only took Duo a few seconds to understand what had happened, and less than that for his rage to bubble upward, his face flushing as he fought to keep control of himself.  Salome had clearly caught Trowa unawares, or set him up for failure, waited until he was reaching into the large, industrial-sized stainless steel refrigerator, and then she’d slammed the door as hard as she could, the resulting pain and shock causing Trowa to drop the glass he’d been holding.

 

Before Duo could say anything, insert himself into the situation, Salome spoke.

 

“Hmm…  I have been thinking perhaps _I_ would take over the interrogation of prisoners in the future.  It seems, though, that I might need a little more practice.” She turned her icy gaze towards Duo, something in it evaluating, before turning back to Trowa.  “Good help _is_ so hard to find.”

 

She sauntered out as Trowa flinched at her words, leaving the two of them staring at each other over a sea of broken glass, like a metaphor Duo didn’t want to think too hard about.  He sighed, swallowing down his anger and frustration.

 

“C’mon, lemme-”

 

“I can handle it,” Trowa growled, moving towards the pantry where Duo knew they kept a small first aid kit.

 

“You know I can’t fuckin’ stand the sound of someone setting their own fuckin’ bones, so just shut up and let me wrap your goddamn wrist up.”

 

Trowa swallowed hard, but followed Duo up the stairs to his room, where Duo slammed the door hard enough to rattle the hinges.

 

He directed Trowa towards the bed, where the taller man reluctantly laid down and held his injured arm out.  Duo dropped the stiff tape he dug out of his own bag on the bed beside him, along with the practically useless first aid kit.  Duo kept his own supply of stuff, including pain medication, but he doubted Trowa would take any.

 

“It’s gonna hurt,” he warned, holding Trowa’s hand up above his shoulder, letting his arm dangle.

 

“It already fucking hurts,” the other man growled. “Just get it over with.”

 

“I can give you-”

 

“No.”

 

Duo shrugged. He wouldn’t have taken the meds either, so he couldn’t blame Trowa for refusing them.  He tugged at Trowa’s limp wrist, pulling and manipulating until he felt the bones slide into proper alignment, trying his best to ignore the pained grunts and wheezes escaping the other man’s clenched jaw.

 

When he was done, he wrapped it in the stiff zinc tape, up past the elbow and back, and then a second time with softer, more flexible athletic tape.

 

“Fingers feel ok?”  If they were tingling, or numb, that was a bigger problem.

 

“They’re fine.”  Trowa sat up, grimacing.  He moved to stand, a clear indication he planned to leave, and Duo nearly lost his shit.

 

“Why can’t you just fucking let me do any goddamn thing around here?”

 

Trowa just stared at him, his expression bleak.  “So she can take her frustration out on you?” He shook his head.

 

“Better me than you,” Duo muttered, nearly inaudible, cradling the injury on his lap under the pretense of checking Trowa’s circulation.

 

“No,” Trowa said again, his expression hard.

 

He wrenched his hand from Duo’s grasp, gritting his teeth either in pain or frustration, and left swiftly, the door shutting behind him in near-silence.  But the effect was nearly as pointed as Duo’s slam.

 

That was when Duo had begun fingering Quatre’s little black disk in the dead of night and contemplating guard rotations.  

 

Then, miraculously, his little _gift_ had begun depositing nuggets of information into his network.

 

 _Relief_ hadn’t been a strong enough word for his feelings.

 

Alessandra and Salome were ecstatic, the ‘mishap’ with the shipment seemingly forgotten, their faith in Trowa and Duo immediately restored, their focus on the leak once again external.

 

All of it had left Duo shaken and enraged, Trowa skittish and more withdrawn than ever.

 

Duo was going to _kill_ Zechs.  As soon as the opportunity arose, or he could create one.

 

Sometimes he imagined it, as a way to pass the time.

 

Ways to murder Milliardo Peacecraft, AKA the Lightning Count, AKA Zechs Merquise, AKA the biggest pain in his ass to date, and not get caught.

 

His email pinged at him.  Swapping tabs, he opened it, full as it was of porn spam and garbage subscriptions, scanning the subject lines. He’d had a sudden influx, six messages in all, from a variety of mundane-appearing spambots.

 

But appearances could be deceiving, and these held a message.

 

*

 

Sally Po was waiting for him, sitting on the back of a bench in Old Mazatlan, blazer and sweats thrown over a striped bikini in deference to the brisk spring breeze coming off the ocean, newspaper and coffee in hand.

 

Duo wandered over, all studied nonchalance, to lean against the same bench, facing the opposite direction.

 

They’d done this dance a thousand times.

 

Today, he’d lost all patience for it.

 

Maybe he’d never had the patience for it to begin with.

 

Sally’s paper rattled in the breeze, along with her hair, the sunlight reflecting off the dark lenses of her sunglasses, and suddenly Duo couldn’t stand any of it for another _fucking_ moment, the subterfuge, the lies, the endlessness of it all.

 

“What the fuck am I doing here, Sal?” he asked finally, his voice low, and he could hear the desperation bleeding into it.

 

She turned to blink up at him above her shades, surprise in her blue eyes.

 

Sally had been his handler since he’d agreed to provide his services to Preventers.  Had, for years, been one of his only honest contacts in the world, one of the only people who knew what he had done, could do, was capable of, and had still been able to look him in the face with compassion and respect.

 

It was a _damn_ shame that Trowa had been saddled with Zechs, given the interaction Duo had witnessed between them last week.

 

“Saving the world, just like always,” she said finally, and her hand moved to the back of the bench, where it brushed against his, just barely.  The smallest gesture of support. Of recognition.

 

“Saving the world is cool and all,” Duo said, bitterness lacing his words, “but my main objective is staying alive.  What do you need from me so I can get the fuck outta this dump heap?”

 

What did Duo have to provide to Une and Sally and the Preventers to get him and Trowa out of here, away from Alessandra, and _safe_?  That’s what he wanted.  It went without saying that they could leave, anytime.  It wouldn’t be that difficult to sneak out, to leave on one of their off days and never come back.  To run back to Howard or disappear off-planet.

 

But they would never be _safe_.

 

Alessandra would never forget, and Salome would never stop looking, and Duo had lived that life of being hunted before, and he wasn’t particularly interested in doing it again.

 

No, the best way to do this was to do it right, to ensure Alessandra and Salome went down with the ship, putting Duo and Trowa out of their grasp forever.

 

Making the Earth Sphere a little safer in the process was just a bonus.

 

“We need to connect the dots,” Sally said briskly, turning back to her paper.  “Supply to demand. Colonials to Earth, shipments to buyers.”

 

Duo grit his teeth, his frustration and rage and impotence boiling over.

 

“I could have had that already,” he ground out, “except fucking Count Barbie let us get _raided_ , all for some fucking good press. Could have gotten either one of us _killed_ in the last week, for _nothing_.”

 

The only thing Duo _didn’t_ have in his data was all of the suppliers. He’d managed, over the last few months, to trace all but one of them, the last supplier on L3, the one who provided Alessandra with roughly 60% of her ‘merchandise’ - drugs and people alike. The shipment that had been seized was to have come from this mysterious salesman.  But Zechs had as good as told them that they - the Preventers - knew who it was. They had tracked him down on L3, had to have, to follow and seize the shipment of _palomniks_ , to know the date and time for the raid, and if the shipment had instead just reached the compound on schedule, Duo would have had electronic tracking records of the shipment - including the supplier.

 

Sally’s back stiffened, and a muscle in her jaw jumped.

 

“It wasn’t my call,” she said after a moment.

 

“It wasn’t your fucking-” Duo cut himself off.  Took a deep breath and blew it out in frustration, head tilted back to stare at the bright blue sky.  “You gotta be fuckin’ kidding me.”

 

It wasn’t the first time that someone over Sally’s head had made a call that compromised his op, that from his perspective - inside the mechanisms, with a very personal view of just how sideways it could go - was the wrong call.  But it was the first time his own life hadn’t been the one in the balance.

 

He was, he decided, done.

 

He’d - they’d, really, he and Trowa - had done a lot of good for Preventers.

 

And they’d done a lot of bad.

 

And the line between the two was often blurred and murky, and Duo could accept that when he had to, when there weren’t any other options.  The world wasn’t black and white, and there was no one who knew that better than he did, no one who had learned it at a younger age, except maybe Heero or Trowa.

 

But they were done doing bad things so the Preventers could get good PR.  

 

There had always been an element of grey to their work - though in the beginning, it had been much more clear-cut.  Terrorist cells and illegal weapons factories and smuggling operations - it was pretty easy to sort the good guys from the bad guys in that situation.  But as the Preventers had come down on that sort of crime, as peace had settled in around the Earth Sphere, the nature of the ops changed too. Gone were the days of infiltrating a terrorist hideout and blowing it to kingdom come, and more and more the ops became deeper, more intense, and required more and more of Duo and Trowa’s souls to accomplish.

 

Every op seemed more fucked-up than the last, and Duo was starting to feel like he wasn’t sure if he was a good guy or a bad guy anymore.  

 

Wasn’t sure if, on the next op, he wouldn’t be rounded up as one of the co-conspirators for real, his paper-thin cover all but forgotten, and he would find himself locked up in prison for his necessary but unsavory crimes.

 

All done in the name of ‘peace’ and ‘justice’.

 

And Trowa, Duo could see, was unravelling.  He’d retreated so far into himself that he was barely the man Duo knew, was almost the No-Name soldier he had been before the war, brittle and hard and barely surviving, and Duo was sure if he had to shoot one more pithy gangbanger or bury one more dead _palomnik_ that Salome had ceased to be amused by, he’d probably eat a bullet.

 

And he wouldn’t let Duo _do_ anything about it.

 

Sally’s paper rattled again, distracting him from his thoughts, and he turned his head to look at it.

 

**_Preventer’s Raid Saves Hundreds_ **

 

Look at that, they’d made the front page news.

 

He sucked his breath in through his teeth.

 

“The next shipment goes through,” he said finally, his voice devoid of emotion, “and I’ll have your fucking data.”

 

Sally nodded, opened her mouth to speak, but Duo cut her off.

 

“And then I want out.  Both of us.”

 

Sally’s jaw shut with a snap, and she turned to look at him again, her eyes searching his face before she nodded.  “We’ll pick you up.”

 

Duo knew what that meant, had done it before and hated it.  It meant being picked up with the rest of the cartel, handcuffed and dragged away, preserving his cover and hiding his extraction, and he hated, _hated_ that not only would he have to do it again, but that Trowa would have to do it as well.  That they’d likely be separated and debriefed and kept apart until the evidence was collected, at a minimum, before they were released and allowed to go home.

 

Sally, at least, would ensure that Duo was kept in comfort, away from the other prisoners.  

 

Protected.

 

He was, suddenly, unsure how Trowa would fare.

 

“Hey, Sal,” he said, and his voice was quieter, more subdued, “make sure you pick Tro up too, yeah?”

 

Her brow furrowed in confusion.  “Of course we’ll-”

 

“No, no.”  He sighed. “Make sure _you_ do it.”

 

“Alright,” she agreed, and his shoulders relaxed, the tension in his spine easing.

 

Sally would make sure Trowa got the same treatment Duo did, whatever it was, and that was the best he could hope for, really.

 

That, and, if he was _very_ lucky, someone might shoot Merquise when they raided the compound.

 

The thought only cheered him a little.

  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:  
> la mujer: Spanish for boss lady  
> Lisichika: Russian for fox  
> Pozhaluista: Russian for please  
> Ya ne mogu smotret', kak ty smotrish' na menya: Russian for 'I can't watch you watch me.'  
> jingcha: Mandarin for police  
> Palomniks: Russian for pilgrims. What Salome calls the trafficked colonials.


	9. Chapter Eight: The Man Comes Around

**_Chapter 8: The Man Comes Around_ **

 

_ There's a man goin' 'round takin' names _

_ And he decides who to free and who to blame _

_ Everybody won't be treated all the same _

_ There'll be a golden ladder reachin' down _

_ When the man comes around _

_ -Johnny Cash _

* * *

  
  
  


Trowa had learned the hard way that he couldn’t outdrink Anhil.

 

Despite having at least twenty pounds on the other man, Trowa had been drunk into horrifying oblivion four times before he gave up on trying to keep up with Anhil when the other man decided to binge.

 

Especially when he decided to binge on tequila.

 

So he confined himself to joining in the first three rounds of tequila shots, and then drifted to the perimeter of the restaurant and sipped on a glass of water while Anhil, Salome and the trio of Guatemalan mercenary pilots they had just hired to run the next shipment of  _ palomniks _ celebrated their new joint venture.

 

It had taken Anhil two months of negotiating and threatening before his old war buddies agreed to another sit down - and Trowa could see that most of Anhil’s jubilation as he tossed back his sixth shot of tequila and laughed at Salome’s grimace of distaste was motivated by relief.

 

Anhil, after all, had borne the brunt of Salome and Alessandra’s anger these past few weeks. Anhil, and Trowa, who had done his best to insert himself between Anhil and Salome whenever he could. 

 

After all, he had worked too damn hard to cultivate Anhil - if Salome decided to kill Alessandra’s most reliable lieutenant, there was no guarantee that Trowa’s place in the Cartel would be safe.

 

It was still the middle of the afternoon, and the group of hardened criminals were drawing quite a bit of attention from the other patrons as they emptied their second bottle of tequila between the five of them and called for another.

 

Of course, considering that the meet had been set for the restaurant at the Aquatic Park, and the shouts of children frolicking in the pools and on the slides outside was loud enough to be heard over Anhil and his compatriots’ slurred retellings of their past deeds, made the entire thing a little surreal for Trowa.

 

Duo had been the one to suggest the location, earning a derisive snort from Anhil and a grimace from Trowa. But Salome had nodded, had reached out and gave Duo’s hair a thoughtful pat before tugging on his bangs none too gently.

 

_ “Of course, lischka _ ,” she had agreed with an icy chuckle. “ _ Even the Snakeheads will think twice before confronting us there.” _

 

And even though Trowa could see the brilliance in that plan, he still didn’t have to like it.

 

Surrounded by children and families -  _ civilians, _ and loud ones at that - Trowa felt hypersensitive to the danger his presence presented to everyone around him.

 

Salome abandoned the group of men and picked up the half-empty bottle of tequila from their table, ignoring the groans of protest before Anhil ordered another.

 

She looked around the restaurant, cool gaze dismissing everyone it passed by until she spotted him near the door. She smirked and started towards him, her sinuous stride effortlessly reptilian and terrifying.

 

Trowa had to force himself not to sit up straighter as she approached, maintaining his slouch and look of bored nonchalance through sheer willpower as she pulled out the chair across from him and straddled it backwards.

 

“Why aren’t you celebrating with us?” she asked, before taking a long swallow of the tequila.

 

She slammed it down on the table beside Trowa’s still wrapped wrist.

 

It should have been put in a cast, Duo had muttered to him more than once, but Trowa wasn’t about to broadcast that significant of an injury. His  _ sprained wrist _ had already earned more than a fair share of snide remarks and considering looks from the other enforcers.

 

Trowa met her gaze and forced himself to smirk.

 

“I was planning a celebration of my own for later.”

 

She snorted.

 

“Oh yes. You and 02. Fucking ‘til you break down the walls. There have been complaints - too noisy.” She made a tsking sound and waved her finger at him in reprimand. 

 

Trowa took a risk and reached for the bottle of tequila. He took a burning gulp of the stuff and put it back between them.

 

“Eduardo or Matvei?” he asked. “Or is there another  _ anus perepuganii _ too afraid to say something to my face?”

 

Salome’s lips twitched, and she took another shot of tequila.

 

“Why do you think it’s you they are afraid of, hm?”

 

Trowa took his turn, gut churning in anticipation of the tequila hitting his tongue again. He hated tequila.

 

“Must be Matvei, then. I think he pisses himself when Duo looks his way.”

 

That made Salome laugh outright, and she propped her elbow against the table and then rested her head on her palm. She considered him from the suspiciously relaxed pose.

 

“Did you fuck him during the war?” Her tone was idle, the question as loaded as the gun Trowa wore at the small of his back.

 

Trowa took another sip of tequila.

 

“Once,” he admitted.

 

“And, what - it was so bad that you hate him?”

 

“I don’t hate him,” Trowa shrugged. “I hate what he reminds me of.”

 

“Bad sex?”

 

“The sex wasn’t - and isn’t - bad. Surely Matvei at least knows what a good fucking  _ sounds _ like, even if he can’t manage one himself?”

 

Again, Salome’s lips twitched, but she continued to look at him, gaze relentless and demanding.

 

“He reminds me of the things I’ve lost. The people I failed.”

 

The really fucked-up part of Trowa admitting that to Salome was that it wasn’t even a lie. Duo was a constant reminder - here, and before this hellish op - that Trowa couldn’t do enough, could never be enough, to save the people and things that really mattered to him. 

 

“ You need to learn to let the past go,  _ kotyenok. _ Do you know why Lessy and I never fear betrayal from you or Anhil?”

 

Trowa knew better than to even attempt to respond to that question.

 

“Anhil is afraid of the future, yes? He has too much to lose - his brother’s family. He knows he is all they have, and he is afraid to risk that. And you? You are afraid of the past. You let it nip at your heels like a rabid dog when all you have to do is kill it to be free.”

 

Trowa got the sense that she was speaking from experience, but he didn’t want to fathom what past Salome had put to death to get to where she was today.

 

Salome finished off the tequila and stood up.

 

“Get Anhil, and let’s go home. I want to tell Lessy the good news. And you have a fox to tame, no?” Her smile was easy, her eyes teasing, and Trowa didn’t think he had ever been as intimidated by her as he was in that moment.

 

Salome pummeling a man to death with a baseball bat had nothing on this woman who looked at him with camaraderie, who teased him the same way Cathy would.

 

Anhil insisted on bringing another bottle of tequila with them for the drive back to the hacienda, and they stuck him in the back seat while Salome sat in the passenger seat beside Trowa as he drove.

The radio was on, and Anhil started singing loudly and horribly off-key to some song.

 

Salome told him to shut up, and he retaliated by singing louder.

 

Trowa gripped the steering wheel tightly as Salome’s shoulders tensed, but then she let out an angry huff of breath and turned off the radio.

 

“Let us teach him a real song, hm?” Salome suggested to Trowa.

 

He glanced over at her, and she was smiling broadly, still in frighteningly good humor.

 

“ _ Oiy moroz, moroz, _ ” she began, singing the lyrics of the song that Trowa had first heard from the captain of the mercenary troupe.

 

Trowa sang along with her, the two of them singing louder and louder, until they were able to drown out Anhil’s belligerent serenade. 

 

He hadn’t sang the song in years, not since he had put the captain in the ground. He had heard it since then - it was a popular enough song in L3 bars, sung by spacers who were shipping out to mine or scavenage or pirate - but Trowa couldn’t bring himself to form the words with his own mouth without thinking of the captain coaching him, teaching him the Russian words and telling him the meaning behind them.

 

They sang  _ Cherniy voron  _ next, and Trowa couldn’t help but think of Duo, who had once asked Trowa to sing to him, and Trowa had sang that song, had pitched his voice low like the old recordings of Terran film stars that the mercenaries used to imitate. Duo had laughed at first, had looked up at him with delighted eyes, and by the end of the song, as Trowa eased down to kiss Duo, as his hands ghosted over his lover’s body, Duo had been breathless and heavy-lidded, his mouth eager as he swallowed the final refrain.

 

Salome, Trowa had to admit, was right.

 

Trowa did let the past nip at his heels. And maybe it was a bad thing, maybe it did fill him with dread - with fear, even. 

 

But he didn’t know who he would be if he let go of it. He wouldn’t be Trowa Barton, for one.

 

And he wouldn’t lay awake at night and wish he was singing to Duo, wishing he had Duo pressed against him, wishing he could feel the curve of Duo’s lips against his own.

 

Two more drinking songs and they were back at the hacienda. Anhil had even joined them for the last one -  _ Trava u doma,  _ which Trowa had taught him months ago during one of his ill-fated and very failed attempts to outdrink the other man.

Trowa had to help Anhil into the hacienda - between the tequila and his still stiff leg, he nearly fell twice before Salome laughed and snapped Trowa over to his side.

 

Salome walked into the house beaming, her swagger and smirk silencing the room as she walked in on the enforcers in the living room.

 

All eyes turned to her, though a few dared to look past her to Anhil and Trowa, including Duo, who took in Anhil’s arm over Trowa’s shoulders and Salome’s obvious delight with tight lips. Duo was smart enough to know that a happy Salome was just as dangerous - if not more dangerous - than an angry Salome.

 

“I hope you all have enjoyed your vacation,  _ chapos _ ,” Salome said to them. “Anhil’s comrades will be bringing our next shipment down next week.”

 

The men and women looked relieved, though a few mustered up excited cheers. Even the  _ palomniks _ sighed. The anxiety that the  _ chapos _ had felt had, Trowa knew, been redirected onto them. Salome, too, had taken advantage of their presence and inability to fight back to let out some of her own frustrations in the past weeks.

 

Salome looked over her shoulder at Trowa.

 

“Drop him there,” she waved at the couch, “and then go carry your  _ lischka _ off for your celebration.”

 

Duo arched an eyebrow at Trowa, and crossed his arms over his chest.

 

“If you even think about picking me up, I will fuck you up so badly, Barton.”

 

Anhil roared with laughter as Trowa eased him down onto a chair.

 

“That’s what he wants!” Anhil said, and Salome smirked.

 

Trowa wasn’t sure if this was some kind of test from her, or some kind of twisted gesture of goodwill - maybe her blessing? 

 

The tequila wasn’t helping him tease out the riddle, but even if he had been sober, Trowa wasn’t sure he could have pieced together the logic behind Salome’s little show.

 

“You could carry me,” he suggested to Duo.

 

Duo looked him over.

 

“You’re heavy,” he sighed, looking resigned to play this out for their audience.

 

“Are you calling me fat?” 

 

“Fat-headed,” Duo muttered. “You want to fuck, then let’s fuck.”

 

“Right here?” Trowa looked around the crowded living room with a smirk. He saw Matvei grimace and Eduardo, beside him, shake his head in disgust.

 

Duo shrugged one shoulder.

 

“Maybe we could teach these  _ tontos _ a few things.”

 

Matvei snorted.

 

“We don’t want to learn any of that shit,” he snarled.

 

Duo looked over at him, and the left side of his mouth curved upwards.

 

“You still haven’t learned your elbow from your ass. We could at least teach you that. Hey,  _ payaso _ , you want to demonstrate?”

 

Trowa rolled his eyes. He wasn’t taking this game  _ that _ far.

 

“You have a room. You have  _ two _ rooms,” Salome waved them away, bored already. “Use one of them. And keep the noise down, hm?”

 

Her last comment had Duo’s eyebrows raising, but Trowa jerked his head towards the back of the house.

 

Duo shook his head, muttered something under his breath, and closed down his work-station. He made a grand ‘after you’ gesture, and Trowa preceded him down the hallway.

 

He was confident there were eyes on them, confident that a bit of a show was expected. But he didn’t care.

 

He waited until they were in his room and the door was locked before he backed Duo up against it, bracing his hands on either side of Duo’s head, and looked into his eyes.

 

“You’re drunk,” Duo said after a moment of looking at Trowa’s face.

 

“Not very,” Trowa shrugged.

 

Duo arched an eyebrow and his hand lashed out, the movement so quick and unexpected that Trowa was helpless to counter it.

 

Duo tickled him, deft fingers finding the spot on Trowa’s ribs that had him  _ giggling _ and stumbling away.

 

Triumphant smirk on his face, Duo stalked towards him.

 

“What was that,  _ payaso _ ? That sound you just made?”

 

“Don’t,” Trowa warned. Begged, really.

 

“Don’t what?” Duo pounced and wrestled him to the floor. 

 

He had never fought fairly - then again, neither had Trowa.

 

They rolled around on the floor, hands searching out the vulnerable spots that no one else - or at least, no one else alive - had discovered.

 

It took entirely too long for Trowa to pin Duo to the ground beneath him, hands stretched above his head and Trowa straddling his thighs.

 

Duo was breathless, grinning up at him, eyes dancing and hair spread out on the floor, golden and brown in the light that spilled into the room from the dying sun outside.

 

_ “Ti  _ **_sah_ ** _ miy krah _ **_see_ ** _ viy,” _ Trowa breathed.

 

Duo’s eyebrows knit together as he translated the words for himself.

 

“And you’re the most drunk,” Duo retorted. 

 

“Mm.” Trowa leaned down and pressed a kiss to Duo’s breastbone, lips lingering over the warm, firm flesh for a moment before he dragged them over Duo’s throat. “You intoxicate me,” he agreed.

 

Duo snorted a laugh, but it ended in a sharp inhale as Trowa nuzzled against Duo’s left ear and gently bit down into the sensitive flesh just below his earlobe. 

 

Trowa felt Duo’s hands clench under the hand that held them in place, and he smirked before kissing Duo’s jaw, his cheek, his eyelids, and then, finally, his lips.

 

Duo kissed him back, the slide of their mouths and tongues so familiar, so easy and intimate.

 

He pulled away enough to look down at Duo again, and Duo’s head lifted, mouth chasing after his own.

 

Trowa used his free hand to trace over Duo’s lips, unsurprised when the other man nipped at his thumb. He pressed it against Duo’s tongue, let Duo suck the digit into his mouth and tease the callused skin with his teeth.

 

He thought about letting go of Duo’s hands so that he could undress him, but he liked the picture Duo made, the illusion of Duo being trapped and pliant.  He withdrew his thumb from Duo’s mouth and trailed it down his throat, over his skittering pulse and to the neck of his shirt.

 

“Apparently, Matvei thinks we’re too  _ loud _ ,” Trowa said. He raked his short nails over Duo’s chest, feeling the sharp jut of his nipples under the thin material of the t-shirt. Duo arched up into the touch.

 

“And here I was, thinking we were being considerate and quiet this whole time,” Duo muttered.

 

Trowa chuckled, and shoved Duo’s shirt up to his armpits. He licked Duo’s belly, just below his ribcage, and he felt Duo try to twist away from him. He blew on the wet skin, and Duo made a choked sound.

 

“Barton,” he warned.

 

“Maxwell,” Trowa growled in response, before swirling his tongue around Duo’s left nipple, tracing over the Sweeper’s insignia against his heart, and then he bit down.

 

Duo bucked up against him, groaning in pain and pleasure.

 

“Let my hands go,” Duo breathed.

 

“I don’t think so. Maybe if you’d let me carry you earlier…”

 

Duo snorted.

 

“Let me go. Your wrist.”

 

That reminder put a bit of a damper on the mood, and Trowa grimaced as he released Duo’s hands, acknowledging the pain that was a constant companion. But Duo was right; it was senseless to strain the injury.

 

Duo closed the space between them, and pressed his lips against the shell of Trowa’s ear.

 

“As soon as we get home, you can tie me up and do whatever you want to me, Tro. I promise.”

 

_ Home _ .

 

Duo made it sound so close, so real.

 

Trowa kissed him again, a little wild, a lot desperate.

 

Duo returned it, hands clutching Trowa tightly, digging into his shoulders, pulling at his hair.

 

They wrestled again, this time with their clothes, until they were finally naked.

 

“On the floor?” Duo asked, as he reached for the lube and condoms Trowa kept under the bed.

 

“Yes,” Trowa decided. He was on his knees, between Duo’s thighs, and he ran his hands over the flexing muscles, letting his nails tease Duo and grinning when he felt the other man shiver.

 

“Gonna be hell on your knees,” Duo pointed out.

 

“How’s that different than anything else?” Trowa asked, and he saw something dark flash through Duo’s eyes, saw his smirk tighten, and he could feel a corresponding plunge in his own gut.

 

Trowa pinched Duo’s right nipple, rolling it between his fingers until Duo sucked in a breath, and the moment passed. He was back with Trowa, and Trowa willed himself to be  _ here _ with Duo. In this room.

 

On this floor, between his thighs, teasing his entrance with slick fingers until Duo’s body opened to him, until he made that  _ sound _ \- not quite a growl, not quite a whimper, low and shallow and soft, and just for Trowa.

 

Trowa teased at Duo, taking his time, savoring this, the tight heat of Duo, the darkness in his eyes that had nothing to do with death or pain and everything to do with lust. His face was flushed, his chest rising and falling with each ragged, uneven breath he took.

 

And then Trowa found that spot, crooking his finger just so, and Duo bit down on his lower lip and arched up, hips surging and eyes squeezing shut. 

 

Trowa added a second finger, finding the spot again and caressing it. He reached out with his other hand and curled his fingers around Duo’s cock, stroking it in time with his other movements.

 

“Fuck, Tro,” Duo breathed, and his hands reached for Trowa, nails dragging over Trowa’s forearm, tracing the tattoos, the words on his wrist, and his eyes were open, just barely, just a flash of blue between dark lashes, fixed on Trowa’s face.

 

He slid a third finger into Duo’s body, and Duo’s hands fell away as he reached for the condom. His movements were as precise as they would be if he was setting C4, and he rolled the latex down Trowa’s shaft without breaking eye contact, his abs contracting as he levered himself up, his body drawing Trowa’s fingers in deeper, and they both shuddered at that.

 

“Now,” Duo said, and Trowa slid his fingers free.

 

He had wanted Duo splayed out on the floor, had wanted to watch Duo’s face, to see his hair spread in a halo around him, but the press of Duo’s thighs against his own gave him a better idea.

 

Trowa hauled Duo into his lap, and Duo chuckled.

 

“Improvising?” he teased, before nipping Trowa’s earlobe.

 

Trowa hummed in agreement, and positioned himself between Duo’s ass cheeks, running his cock back and forth between the crease until Duo started to squirm.

 

Duo reached back, taking matters into his own hands, and pressed the head of Trowa’s cock to his entrance.

 

It was a slow slide into heaven, heat and strength surrounding Trowa, Duo’s arms around his neck, Duo’s cheek pressed to his forehead, and Trowa’s arms tangled in Duo’s hair as he supported his back.

 

“ _ Pozvol' mne umeret' vot tak _ ,” Trowa sighed.

 

“No one’s dying today - and you sure as shit can’t die before I come,” Duo growled.

 

Trowa laughed, and tilted his head back to capture Duo’s lips in a kiss.

 

They moved together, practice having made perfect a long time ago. It was slow, and it was so fucking good, Duo anchoring him to Earth, holding him down, keeping Trowa from drifting off into space, staving off the darkness, rising and falling above him as Trowa coaxed him on.

 

Duo got there first, hands digging into Trowa’s shoulders and his breath coming out in a surprised gasping moan before he latched onto Trowa’s lips with his own.

 

A few more thrusts into Duo’s body, already clenched around him so firmly, and Trowa was lost to pleasure as well, desperately clinging to Duo while the world went white and empty around them.

 

-o-

 

It was still strange, sharing a bed.

 

Before, back in the real world - or, hell,  _ this _ , Trowa supposed, was as real as that world. But in that other life, the one that he and Duo kept safe and hidden in their apartment, it had taken a while to get used to the idea of sharing a bed. 

 

Fucking had been one thing. A  _ good _ thing. A necessary thing, some nights. But the things that came after, the intimacy, the belonging - those had taken Trowa off-guard, and still could, on occasion. 

 

Waking up to find Duo curled around his back, putting himself between Trowa and whatever potential threat might be lurking, wasn’t a novel sensation anymore. But it still left Trowa feeling oddly adrift, left him wondering what the fuck was wrong with Duo that he wanted to put himself between Trowa and a bullet. 

 

He stretched, slowly, gently, trying to work through the lingering pain in his wrist and the pleasant ache in his ass and thighs from a night spent together. He didn’t want to wake Duo, not considering how late they had actually been up, and especially not considering how nice it felt to have Duo’s steady heartbeat drumming against his spine, Duo’s strong, deadly hands wrapped around him, Duo’s leg thrown over his as though to make sure he didn’t get any stupid ideas and try to leave.

 

Trowa smirked at that. 

 

Duo generally thought all - or, at best,  _ most _ \- of Trowa’s ideas were stupid. 

 

Trowa sighed and closed his eyes. He tried to will himself back to sleep.

 

But his thoughts were already racing ahead, leaving behind tranquility and safety and comfort. Hurtling towards misery and anxiety and gut-churning guilt.

 

Another shipment. 

 

Less than a week, and another hundred - two hundred,  _ three hundred - _ L3 civilians would arrive and be processed. Bodies emptied and sorted, and then sold off. 

 

He had known it would be like this. It had been made very clear, in the first mission briefings, that long-term undercover work in a drug cartel that made nearly half of their income in human trafficking was going to mean he sat by and watched hundreds,  _ thousands _ of civilians sold off before he would be able to put a stop to it. 

 

Trowa squeezed his eyes shut tighter, as if he could put a stop to his own thoughts.

 

But he couldn’t stop it. That was the reality. One setback meant another path was forged. One door was closed, and another was forced open. One enforcer was killed, and a more ruthless one took his place. 

 

There was, as far as Trowa could see, no end in sight. Just a lifetime to this. 

 

“Why the fuck can’t you ever just  _ sleep _ ?” Duo grumbled, stubble rough against the back of Trowa’s neck.

 

Trowa swallowed hard. He hadn’t even registered Duo waking up. 

 

“I slept,” Trowa retorted.

 

“Yeah, for what - ten minutes? Jesus,  _ payaso _ , learn how to turn your brain off.  We spend all night having fucking amazing sex, and  _ now _ you’re-”

 

“Duo.”

 

Something in his voice gave him away, gave away his thoughts or- something.

 

Duo’s hands tightened around him for a moment, and then he shifted, pulling away from Trowa.

 

Trowa rolled, wondering what he was doing, wondering why he was leaving, wondering where he was  _ going _ this early in the morning.

 

Still naked, Duo knelt in the jumble of their clothes and dug around until he found his own shorts. He pulled his phone out, typing one-handed, and after a moment, the sounds of the shitty spacer synth-pop that Howard loved so much filled the room. 

 

Duo turned the volume down lower, keeping it just loud enough to cover the sounds of him climbing back into the bed and pulling Trowa close again, this time front to front. Duo put the phone down on the nightstand beside the bed and looked down at Trowa. 

 

He leaned down and brushed his lips over Trowa’s, soft, swift. Not even long enough to be a tease.

 

“I met with Sally,” Duo whispered against his skin.

 

Trowa wrapped his arms around Duo’s shoulders, pulling him closer and trailing his fingers over Duo’s skin.

 

“This shipment goes through, and that’s it. They’ll have everything they need, and we’ll be done.”

 

Duo snaked one hand between their bodies, fingers curving over Trowa’s hip and thigh, nails grazing over the sensitive spots so that Trowa arched into him.

 

One more shipment.

 

Trowa pressed his lips against Duo’s shoulder, finding a decade old bullet wound and laving at it with his tongue.

 

One more shipment.

 

Sacrifice just a few hundred more civilians, and then-

 

And then what?

 

The bureaucrats would step in, and there would be more news coverage and Zechs in all his golden, smirking glory, and three hundred more souls lost forever. 

 

And that was  _ if _ the plan worked.

 

_ If _ Preventers actually let them go through with it this time.

 

Trowa traced over Duo’s spine, feeling each sharp jut, counting his way down until he reached Duo’s ass. He cupped one firm cheek in his hand and rolled, shifting Duo on top of him.

 

Duo met his eyes, and he saw. He knew.

 

“Trowa.”

 

“It’s never going to end. It’s never going to stop,” Trowa whispered, words nearly without sound, just shapes forced between his lips as he stared up at Duo.

 

Duo closed his eyes, drew in a deep breath and slowly let it out.

 

He opened his eyes and leaned close again.

 

Trowa lifted his head to meet Duo’s lips, and he buried his hands in Duo’s hair, tangling his fingers in the loose strands.

 

“It’s going to stop. This is the end, Tro. One shipment, and it’s over. One shipment, and they pull us out.”

 

“If - Duo, what if-”

 

Duo kissed him again, a little frantic. Trowa could  _ feel _ his frustration.

 

“The world is fucking full of ifs, Trowa. There’s nothing we can do about that. All we can do is-”

 

“We can stop this shipment from going through, Duo. We have to. We have to do this  _ one _ thing.”

 

“Tro - this shipment connects the buyers to the cartel and-”

 

“Then what the fuck has your data worm been doing this whole time? Don’t tell me you’ve been playing minesweeper for  _ months _ while I’ve been out there  _ murdering- _ ”

 

“Shut the fuck up,” Duo hissed, eyes dark and furious as he kissed Trowa again. They glared at each other, Duo’s fingers digging into his shoulders and Trowa’s tugging on his hair, and when they broke apart again, they were both breathless.

 

Breathless and hard.

 

_ They were so fucked up _ , Trowa couldn’t help but think as Duo scrambled for the lube and Trowa grabbed a condom.

 

Duo stretched him, breathing ragged and eyes still filled with anger, and Trowa fought to catch his own breath.

 

He managed to open the condom, fumbled a little rolling it down Duo’s cock, but then it was on and Duo was sliding into him, and they were both groaning.

 

It was as if Duo was trying to fuck some sense into Trowa, using quick, hard thrusts, his trim hips rolling with each move and his chest heaving, arms straining as he held himself up and glared down at Trowa.

 

All Trowa could do was hold on, one hand braced on the wall, the other still in Duo’s hair.

 

It was quick, so quick it felt like a sprint, felt like Trowa’s orgasm was a dive over the side of a cliff, and he was left gasping and clawing at Duo as the other man buried his face in Trowa’s shoulder and trembled.

 

Duo’s weight pressed down on him, adding to Trowa’s struggle to catch his breath, making him wonder if he should even bother. 

 

But Duo was there. Duo was furious and holding him, and Duo was  _ there _ . 

 

The one thing Trowa had tried to prevent - Duo getting dragged into this - was the one thing keeping Trowa from walking into the jungle and never coming back out.

 

“We stop the shipment,” he insisted. “Let me save someone.”

 

Duo’s fingers tightened, and Trowa could feel him swallow.

 

“Only if you let me save you,  _ payaso _ .”

 

-o-

 

Translations:

_ Palomniks _ : pilgrims; Salome’s name for the trafficked Colonials

_ Lischka _ : Russian for Fox

_ Anus Perepuganii _ : Russian for scared anus

_ Kotyenok _ : Russian for kitten

_ Oiy moroz, moroz _ : Russian song “Oh It’s Freezing, It’s Freezing” A traveler is begging winter not to freeze him because he wants to go home to his beautiful wife.

_ Cherniy Voron _ : Russian song “The Black Raven”, compares death to a raven circling overhead.

_ Trava u doma _ : Russian song “Grass Near the House” it’s from the 1980s and it’s basically about how everything is supposed to be awesome out in space as an astronaut but things are always better at home.

_ Chapos _ : Spanish slang for cartel soldier

_ Tontos _ : Spanish for fools

_ Payaso _ : Spanish for clown

_ Ti sahmiy krahseeviy _ : Russian, you are the most beautiful (technically most handsome)

_ Pozvol’ mne umeret’ vot tak _ : Russian, let me die like this.

  
  
  



	10. Ring of Fire

Chapter 9: Ring of Fire

 

_ I fell for you like a child, _

_ Oh, but the fire went wild. _

_ I fell into a burning ring of fire, _

_ I went down, down, down and the flames went higher _

-Johnny Cash

 

* * *

  
  


Duo had never in his career burned an op.  He’d had a few go sideways, and one spectacular failure that was a result of bad intel rather than his own actions, but he’d never intentionally ignored a mission directive or abandoned his cover just because things were getting hairy.

 

The desperate, pleading look on Trowa’s face the morning after the pilot meet was another thing entirely.

 

A thing he couldn’t forget about, a thing he couldn’t ignore.

 

And, he bitterly realized, it was why Heero had been so against Duo coming on this op.  Not that he would ever tell him or Quatre that, and not that Heero would have been the better choice.  Heero probably would have been dead two weeks in. Trowa would have been dead in El Walamo, Duo was pretty sure.  Anhil would never have taken Heero on that run.

 

Trowa was dangerously close to the edge, and teetering towards destruction with every passing hour.  He could see it shining behind the other man’s empty facade, and he was starting to think Anhil could too.  Could see  _ something _ , anyway, the way he had taken to watching Trowa with concern when he thought the other man wouldn’t notice.  

 

Duo stared at the lines of data on his screen - not fucking  _ Minesweeper _ , whatever Trowa thought he was doing - and contemplated razing the last ten years of his life to the ground.

 

Making a decision, he reached for the keyboard, typing furiously.  He had less than a week to make arrangements that should have taken months, to parcel out information and evidence, and to get it all to the right hands where it would hopefully be acted upon.  On the other end, it would give Sally only a few days to arrange a difficult and complicated op of her own. 

 

It was going to be damn near impossible.

 

But, as Merquise had so sarcastically mentioned in the past - he was a Gundam Pilot.  Impossible was kinda their schtick.

 

A few days later, Salome, in a move that shouldn’t have surprised him as much as it did, considering his luck and her mercurial attitude, threw a wrench in all his carefully-laid plans.

 

“Anhil, you and  _ kotyenok _ will handle the shipment,” Salome announced, a sly smirk playing around her lips.  “The little fox and I will work on our... security issue while you’re gone.”

 

Duo felt a cold knot of dread in his chest.  It was too late to back out now. He’d already sent out a dozen data packets, all wrapped in code and disguised as online transactions and streaming services, all while implicating everyone in the compound except Alessandra and Salome.  He hoped she was talking about the still-unknown leak to the Snakeheads, but he could be wrong.

 

Though if she’d discovered his subterfuge, he doubted she would waste any time exacting the price of betrayal from him, and intellectually, he knew this was just one of those unforeseeable  complications that came from working deep undercover. 

 

“When’s the arrival?” Anhil asked, not tearing his eyes away from the game on TV, and barely lifting his lips from the neck of the beer bottle in his hand.

 

“Two days,” Salome answered, already breezing out of the room, heels clicking against the floor.  

 

Two days.  Just forty-eight hours until the last shipment - or, what he hoped was the last shipment. What Trowa had demanded be the last shipment.  Duo had sent all the details he had to Sally already, but there’d been nothing in response. Not through any of their usual channels. Trowa was already wound tighter than a steel drum, and Duo was frankly unsure what the other man would do if they processed the entire shipment and the Preventers didn’t intervene.

 

He looked across the room to the chair Trowa was ensconced in, and found his flat, angry stare focused on Salome’s exit.

 

Duo hoped Trowa wasn’t stupid enough to act on the impulses Duo could see in his twitching fingers and grinding jaw.

 

The other man, fortunately, made no move to follow her.

 

Reaching for his keyboard, Duo dutifully passed along the updated schedule and the change to the work assignments, cloaked, as always, in hidden bytes and coded phrases.  It was a risk, sending information out in the middle of the day, but up-to-date information could and did sometimes make the difference between living and dying. Leaning back, he took a deep, shuddering breath, shoving down the gut-churning panic that was trying to bubble up.

 

All that was left now was more waiting.

 

Nothing meaningful changed - Salome didn’t appear over his bedside with a butcher knife or corner him in the kitchen - while the time passed as it always did. As usual, Duo was sleeping almost none, and Trowa was stomping through the compound like the snarling, vengeful tiger Alessandra had often accused him of being, and they both did nothing but  _ worry _ . Even when they were curled around each other at night, even when they fucked to the point of complete exhaustion, they worried. Duo about his data transfers, Trowa about the impending shipment, and both of them about  _ after _ .  

 

Meanwhile, Matvei did everything he could to make the wait excruciating.  He made cutting comments that Duo ignored and Trowa exacerbated, and took his impatience out on the  _ palomniks _ .  Veta, especially, was sporting fresh bruises around her wrists and upper arms, and a skittish, withdrawn expression that was unlike her usual surly superiority.  Trowa, Duo knew, was seriously considering whether he could kill the ignorant asshole and get away with it. Duo was wondering if he should be expecting Matvei to ‘find’ a stray bullet if and when the Preventers raided. 

 

And still, they waited.

 

*

 

Duo was lounging by the pool when he heard the  _ whump-whump-whump _ that was more displaced air than actual sound. Stealth helicopters, well... weren’t.  Duo had piloted stealth. He knew the exact terror of complete silence that was unexpectedly broken by screaming destruction.  The whisper of rotors on the wind was enough to get him moving. Especially because he hadn’t actually been relaxing - more like lying still with gut-clenching anxiety - but now he moved. By all appearances, slow and languid, but with hidden purpose.  He made his way back inside to his desk, where he slipped his headphones around his neck and propped his feet on the edge of the workstation. 

 

And proceeded to wait.

 

After two and a half minutes, he slipped his hands onto the top of his head and interlocked his fingers, watching the dancing numbers on his monitor and the glitch of the security cameras as it repeated every eight point five seconds.  

 

Bad splicing.

 

Less than three minutes from the time he walked into the house, the front door burst inwards with an incoming rush of black-suited, kevlar-protected bodies, assault rifles at the ready and shouting orders in both English and Spanish.  Duo never moved, though he was recognized and surrounded almost immediately by three of the masked intruders. He grinned at the shortest of them, rocking back in the chair as though he’d never been more relaxed in his life.

 

Maybe he hadn’t been.

 

He knew Preventers SOP and gear when he saw it, and he could recognize the subtle marks that indicated rank.  

 

His gamble had paid off.  They were here. And maybe he was going to solitary until they sorted out his cover story and his real story, but he was leaving this hellhole and he was taking Trowa with him, and that was alright as far as he was concerned. 

 

When the suits poured in, only a few people had been in the  _ hacienda _ .  Some  _ palomniks _ , including Veta and Luiza, who were regular fixtures, and Tomas and Javier, among a few other, younger enforcers. Salome had decided at the last minute to join Anhil and Trowa at the mill, something that had only increased Duo’s agitation. The shipment was much larger than usual, courtesy of their new pilots’ larger transport vehicle, and she had taken most of the remaining enforcers with her as well to help with the processing. Alessandra was in her office, and at the first incursion, Veta had darted into the back of the house, tactical teams chasing after her.  There was the expected gunfire, and a short, sharp shout that Duo thought was Alessandra crying out, but he never moved. Just grinned indolently at the now-five Preventers surrounding him. Listened to the crackle of radios and the pounding of booted feet, and bided his time.

 

Veta was dragged back after some time, like a spitting, hissing, scalded cat, blood spatter decorating the side of her face and arm as a faceless Preventer zip-tied her hands and forced her into a seat. 

 

“ _ ¿Qué tienes que decir a tu favor? _ ” Duo said to her, jerking his chin towards the gore.

 

Turning away, Veta fixed her gaze on the Preventer who had holstered their weapon but was still standing between Duo and the door.  Duo noticed that one had the most stripes, and he revised his opinion of Veta’s intelligence and powers of observation.

 

“ _ Tu amigo es un chico muy pesado. Habla por los codos y no hay forma de detenerlo. _ ”

 

Duo cackled.

 

Finally, minutes that felt like hours later, it seemed that the remaining enforcers and  _ palomiks _ had been rounded up, the criminals shuffled into containment vans and the others to temporary medical tents for examination, and the Preventers around him seemed to lose some of the adrenaline-fueled edge they’d been carrying.  With the exception of himself and Veta, everything was secured. Alessandra had been wheeled by on a stretcher, oxygen mask on her face and seemingly unconscious, and Duo’s questions about Veta were answered. 

 

Only when a familiar blonde-haired face walked through the front door of the house did the remaining Preventers around him relax, all but one even going so far as to secure their weapons.

 

“Agent Po!” Duo called cheerfully. “Long time, no see.”

 

“Maxwell, you are a pain in my ass,” she responded, and Duo felt something that had been stretched too thin inside him relax for the first time in months. 

 

“That’s the goal,” he agreed, slowly lowering his hands to the arms of the computer chair.  “You’re pretty far from home, though. Didya come all the way here to see little ol’ me?”

 

Sally snorted, strolling across the room to plant herself in front of the lone agent with a gun in their hand, who immediately lowered it in confusion. 

 

“Nope, just touring the ass-end of Mexico,” she snapped back, and Duo couldn’t help but laugh.

 

“Where’s your next stop?” he asked encouragingly.  “I know all the good tourist traps.”

 

“Nowhere,” she answered, her brow furrowed. “This is my only stop.”

 

Duo froze.  That made no sense.  He’d given them  _ everything _ . They had to know - had to be aware of the mill and the shipment-

 

“Fucking excuse me?” he said instead, and planted his boots on the ground and leaned forward in the chair in one smooth motion.  Two of the agents made moves towards their weapons, but didn’t lift them. Sloppy. Duo could have killed at least three of them if he’d continued his forward motion and pulled his weapon.  He shook his head. “You know what, fuck this.” 

 

He’d already burned this op, and he was ready to burn his entire life to the ground, and he’d be damned-

 

Duo reached up and yanked at the chain hanging around his neck until it snapped, tossing Sally the data drive attached to it carelessly.

 

“Merry fuckin’ Christmas,” he said, standing up.  “That’s the entire Snakeheads organization in your hand, in addition to this clusterfuck.”  He glanced around at the other agents in the room, all watching him warily, most of them edging hands towards weapons.  At Veta, who was staring at him in frank appraisal, rage in her eyes. 

 

She’d figured it out before the trained law enforcement.  He snorted.

 

“I’m Duo Maxwell,” he started, making sure all eyes were on him, and noticing as Sally’s widened in response.  “I am a Level 8 Preventers agent, badge number 08744, and I am getting the fuck outta here.” He turned on his heel, striding across the demolished kitchen and out the back deck doors.  He heard the shuffle of footsteps behind him, and knew Sally was following. 

 

She caught him just at the edge of the pool before he slipped into the trees, but only because he let her.

 

“Merquise is leading the Mill Strike Team,” she huffed out, torn between frustration and another emotion Duo couldn’t readily identify.  “We hit both locations at the same time to reduce casualties and-”

 

“You were supposed to grab Barton,” Duo said, the words like dust on his tongue.

 

“He’s Merquise’s agent-”

 

“You mean Captain Barbie wants to pose for the press with all the poor colonials he got to save by not getting his hands dirty even once.  I hope he at least shaved that shit off his face.”

 

Duo strode into the trees, ignoring Sally calling him, ignoring everything but the pressing need to be where Trowa was, because there was a lump of lead in his gut still, one that told him this wasn’t over.

 

*

 

The lumber mill was a madhouse.  The takedown was clearly not going as well as the ambush at the  _ hacienda _ , with dead enforcers and dead colonials littering the landing pad, and gunfire still audible everywhere Duo turned.  From the looks of things, it was clear that most of the dead colonials had been shot by the Cartel, probably to prevent them from telling their stories to law enforcement.  Not as many as Duo had expected, though, and he hoped most of them had made it to the treeline or Preventers’ custody.

 

He’d had no trouble getting there before Sally’s team, though they were undoubtedly on their way if he knew her at all.  But Duo knew all the back roads and all the potholes by the back of his hand now, and he’d taken the fastest car in Alessandra’s collection to get there.  No one had stopped him on the way out - probably Sally’s work - and he parked far enough from the mill to go unnoticed in the chaos. 

 

Merquise’s Strike Team was partially pinned down by the Cartel enforcers, who knew the layout of the multi-level, multi-room compound better than the agents, though the agents’ greater numbers and preparedness was slowly turning the tide, as far as Duo could see.  Already, there were several enforcers in custody in a containment van that Duo bypassed as he edged the perimeter unnoticed. 

 

It was easy enough to slip into the complex, between his own skills and the lack of attention anyone had for anything that wasn’t shooting at them.  He wasn’t wearing Preventers armor, but he was wearing enough black, as usual, to pass muster. It was funny what the human brain would ignore, as long as it was expected.  He moved like he belonged there, and he didn’t make any threatening gestures at the agents, and their brains dismissed him as a threat. 

 

The enforcers  _ knew _ him.  If any of them saw him, they wouldn’t, hopefully, be inclined to shoot.  Though he was under no illusions about his current popularity. Someone might take it into their head to be rid of him, if they thought he was an easy target.  Matvei, for example. But no one did.

 

He made his way through the twists and turns of the old mill quickly, heading for the most defensible location - a room in the southwest corner of the building.  It had too many entrances, but one of them led to a long hallway that exited the building almost directly into the forest, and couldn’t be opened from the outside.  Salome wasn’t stupid, and neither were Anhil or Trowa, and Duo was betting that they were both with the woman, and aware of the tactical advantages. Duo knew Trowa wouldn’t actually let Salome get away, but he did think Trowa would play his role as long as it benefitted him, and until Preventers had a clear win, it benefitted him to play the loyal guard dog.

 

The farther he got into the complex, the quieter and less messy the firefight became.  Preventers hadn’t penetrated quite this far, and Duo slowed his own pace in response, rounding corners carefully with his weapon drawn and ready.  By the time he got to the small hallway that led to the office he’d laid all his bets on, Duo hadn’t seen anyone from either side in at least five minutes.  Either they were in this room, or he’d missed them in his initial search and would have to double back.

 

The murmur of voices he heard as he approached the turn reassured him, relieved some of the tension in his shoulders, though he didn’t relax his guard or his weapon.  Trowa’s deep rumble was audible, though he couldn’t make out the words, and he heard Anhil respond with something short and sharp.

 

Duo saw the exact moment Trowa’s cover was blown.  The moment as he turned the corner, still unnoticed by the room’s occupants, and watched as Merquise stepped efficiently through one of the three doors in the room with his weapon at the ready and sighted Trowa down the line.  Then he  _ hesitated _ , a clear jerk as his gun fixed on the tall former-pilot, whose attention was a split second behind noticing the blond-haired man’s entrance, and then it snapped away before coming back.  Trowa didn’t notice, but Duo did. And so did Salome, who was positioned firmly behind and to the left of Trowa, taking advantage of the natural cover, with a gun in her hand.

 

Salome noticed Merquise’s reaction, marked Duo’s entrance to the room - when he was supposed to be at the compound, for fuck’s sake - and Duo could see the quick and devious calculation behind her ice blue eyes.  

 

Duo felt the familiar spike of fear curl in his gut.

 

He turned, pointing his weapon at Merquise, because  _ fuck him, that’s why _ -

 

The blond-haired Preventer went down in a flurry of curses and a splatter of blood, and Duo glanced up in surprise to see Anhil swinging around from where he’d shot the other man to point his weapon at Duo before lowering it when he recognized him. 

 

“What the fuck are you doin’ here, Maxwell?” Anhil barked, but before Duo could answer, Salome huffed a delightfully murderous laugh.

 

“Oh, isn’t it obvious?” The question was rhetorical, her eyes glinted with fury, and Duo knew he was fucked.  Knew Trowa was fucked too.

 

He’d always known he was probably going to die on an op, but he’d selfishly hoped he wouldn’t take Trowa down with him.  Duo wondered with despair why he’d ever thought it wouldn’t come to this. To Trowa’s death and the fault firmly at Duo’s feet.  

 

Her chin jerked, and Duo felt, a split-second later, the responding tug on his hair as the braid he’d worn for most of his life - first, proudly, and then with resignation - was unceremoniously yanked.  Duo held still, ignoring the burn along his scalp, and refusing to allow his head to be pulled backwards. 

 

Duo threw a last gambit, playing fast and loose with the truth in the way only he could.  “Compound’s overrun. Thought I could be more help here.” He didn’t look at Trowa as he said it, his eyes firmly on Salome. 

 

“I find that very hard to believe,  _ izmennik _ .  Put the gun down, very slowly, or I put a bullet in your  _ lyubovnik _ ,  _ da _ ?”  She’d moved up behind the other man, and Duo couldn’t see the gun anymore, which meant it was pointed very firmly at Trowa’s back.  “You too,  _ kotyenok _ .”

 

Duo held the gun up, both hands in a classic ‘I surrender’ gesture, and visibly flicked the safety before leaning down to place it on the ground to his right.  Predictably, whoever had him from behind - and he was betting Matvei, given the viciousness of the gesture - put a boot in his knee to force him to a kneeling position.  It made his hair tear even more forcefully at his scalp, and the pain of it actually brought tears to his eyes that Duo had to blink away.

 

Fucking hair.

 

Fucking life.

 

Fucking  _ fuck _ .

 

He met Trowa’s eyes, finally.  The sound of the ongoing firefight raged around them, only mildly muffled by the walls, but for a moment, it all faded away as their gazes met.  Trowa’s green gaze was almost relieved, resigned in a way that destroyed Duo’s soul. Trowa tossed his gun aside, lazy and unconcerned, and too far out of reach when it landed.

 

Trowa had given up, accepted his fate.

 

Then Matvei yanked on his hair again, and Duo saw the flicker of rage behind green eyes that made Duo think there might be something there left for fighting too.  He blinked in rapid succession, and Trowa’s eyes widened as he realized that Duo meant to do something, something incredibly dangerous and stupid, and he wasn’t wrong.

 

Merquise was down for the count, making pained, wheezing noises twenty feet away.  Anhil was staring between Duo and Salome in confusion that was going to rapidly resolve into understanding at any moment.  If there was a golden opportunity for making a move, now was it. The idiocy of thinking that, because Duo didn’t have his  _ gun, _ he was unarmed - well, that was going to come back to bite them all in the ass.  If Duo was going to go out, it wasn’t going to be on his knees execution-style. Duo was going out the same way he’d presumably come in - kicking, screaming and covered in someone else’s blood.

 

He let his arms go loose by his sides, casual-like, and grinned his best smile at Salome.  The cold, dead one that probably still gave a handful of former Oz officers nightmares.

 

Everyone always went for the hair.  They always thought it was his weakest point, thought he was attached to it in some meaningful way.  And maybe he had been, ten years ago, when he’d been on a quest for vengeance and wore it as a tribute to the only kindness he’d ever known.  But in the intervening time, it had come to represent something else entirely. A distinguishing feature that allowed him to be something that Sister Helen would have abhorred, he figured.  She wouldn’t, Duo knew, be proud of the things he’d done wearing his hair in the braid she’d made for him. The reminder he didn’t deserve.

 

A flick of his wrists, and the knives sheathed to his forearms dropped into his hands and he was turning, slashing, the weight of his hair disappearing almost instantly thanks to the razor-sharp blade.  There were strands of it hanging in his face now, but Duo ignored them as he struck upwards. A quick glance confirmed his suspicion that Matvei had been the one to grab him, even as the other man stared in shock at the length of brown hair wrapped around his fist, and then at the blade embedded in his chest, just below his sternum, shoved up and under the bone.

 

Duo didn’t even pause in his turn as Matvei crumpled to the ground, already dead though he didn’t know it yet, and flung his remaining knife at Anhil.  Alessandra’s favorite lieutenant had never been a stupid man, and he was already in the process of raising his gun to point at Duo. There was a shot, but no bullet struck him, and Duo’s blade flew straight and true, to embed itself in the vulnerable edge of his thigh.  Non-lethal, Duo hoped, because he wasn’t sure Trowa would forgive him for killing the guy, but he’d aimed for Anhil’s still-weak right leg, and the other man collapsed as expected. 

 

Rolling to the side, Duo came up with his gun in hand, safety off and pointed in Salome’s general direction. 

 

And realized where the gunshot he’d heard had originated.

 

Trowa was lying in a pool of his own blood, and Salome’s blonde and pink curls were flying behind her as she dove through the open door at the far side of the room, the one that Anhil had been positioned in front of.  Territory they had already secured. 

 

_ She was getting away _ .

 

Duo couldn’t bring himself to give a fuck.  Instead, he scrambled across the empty space separating him from Trowa, sliding to his knees, gun still in his hand.  He dropped it in favor of reaching for Trowa, his other hand diving into his pocket for the little black button he’d been carrying ever since Trowa’s post-coital confession.  Fuck it, fuck this,  _ fuck everything _ .  He tapped the hidden button without even looking, the groove easy to find after weeks of nervously fiddling with it.  He tossed it aside, reaching instead for Trowa to put pressure on the bleeding wound in his gut, even though he knew he wouldn’t manage to put a stop to this bleeding, even though he knew Trowa was bleeding just as much or more from the entrance wound in his back. He just wrapped his hands on top of one another and  _ leaned _ .

 

“What the fuck, Barton, don’t you fucking die on me, you goddamn asshole,” Duo muttered, pressing harder, and Trowa groaned, blinking up at him blearily.

 

Duo nearly cried in relief.

 

But Trowa was pale, grey, and his stare was glassy in a way that Duo had seen too many times, on dead and dying men.

 

He reached up, fingering the strands of hair hanging around Duo’s face in confusion.  

 

There was a commotion behind the door Salome had disappeared through, but Duo ignored it.  If he was going to die, he wanted to be looking at Trowa when it happened. If Trowa died, Duo didn’t want him to do it alone.

 

“What in the fuck have you done to your hair,  _ zvezda _ _?” _

 

Duo choked back a sob as the pool of blood he was kneeling in spread, and Trowa’s hand on his face grew slack. 

  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:
> 
> Qué tienes que decir a tu favor? - Spanish “what do you have to say for yourself?”
> 
> Tu amigo es un chico muy pesado. Habla por los codos y no hay forma de detenerlo. - Spanish “your friend talks out of his elbows and no one can shut him up”
> 
> izmennik - Russian “traitor”
> 
> lyubovnik - Russian “lover”
> 
> Da - Russian “yes”
> 
> zvezda - Russian “my star”


	11. Ain't No Grave

**Ain’t No Grave**

_Well, look way down the river, what do you think I see?_

_I see a band of angels and they’re coming after me_

_Ain’t no grave can hold my body down_

_There ain’t no grave can hold my body down._

_-Johnny Cash_

  


* * *

  


_“Yeshcho razik, yeshcho da raz! Ey, ukhnem! Ey, ukhnem! Yeshcho razik, yeshcho da raz!”_

 

The words echoed through Trowa’s mind.

 

Had, for as long as he could remember. He didn’t know if they were a dream or a memory or a fantasy. He had turned them around in his head for so long, had tried to tease out who had sung the words, had tried to describe the _feeling_ \- the low, hoarse voice washing over him, and the feeling of firelight and warmth and the smell of pine.

 

Trowa had told Duo about it, once. It had been so late at night that it was morning, and Duo had shuddered awake, eyes wild, breathing shallow and rapid, and when Trowa had asked if he was okay, Duo had made an awful sound - something between a laugh and a sob. So Trowa had pulled Duo close and sang to him while he ran his fingers along Duo’s spine and tangled them in Duo’s hair. And Duo had asked, because Duo always asked, but Trowa hadn’t been able to tell him where or when he learned the song. He had had a moment of resentment - sharing this moment with Duo, and then facing the reality that he didn’t _know_ what it was. But then Duo had kissed his shoulder and asked Trowa to teach him the words. It had been the first song Trowa had taught him, the first-

 

 _Duo_.

 

Trowa struggled through the memories, through the hazy white noise and-

 

He felt pain, sharp and burning, and it took his breath away. It felt like his body was on fire, felt like his side was some twisting, molten thing that was going to eat him alive and-

 

 _Duo_.

 

He had to save Duo. He had to do that one thing. He needed-

 

*

 

“... _not_ gonna happen. I mean it - if you even _think_ about asking him to do it, I will burn HQ to the ground.”

 

Everything hurt, but it wasn’t the burning, suffocating pain that had defeated Trowa before. Now, everything felt distant and dull. _There_ but _not_ at the same time.

 

Trowa realized he was still alive.

 

“Duo,” he tried to say, but even to his own ears, it sounded like a garbled croak. His throat hurt, and his tongue felt unwieldy and so _dry_.

 

“Tro. Trowa, I’m right here.”

 

He tried to open his eyes, but the light was so bright - so, _so_ bright. Slowly, carefully, he blinked.

 

Duo was there. Duo was right there. He was so close and-

 

“Tell me you’re alive,” Trowa said - _tried_ to say, but instead, he ending up coughing and gagging, and _fuck,_ that hurt.

 

He tried to clutch his side, the source of the pain, but Duo was there, hands reaching for his and stopping him.

 

“Oh no, you’re not doing that again. Last time you ripped out the drainage tube and had to have another surgery. Leave it alone.”

 

Trowa tried to hold onto Duo’s hands, felt the solid heat and strength of him.

 

“You’re alive,” he sighed, and relaxed back against scratchy sheets.

 

“Yeah, _payaso_ , I’m alive. And despite your best fucking efforts, so are you.”

 

Duo looked pale, deep shadows bruising his eyes, and his _hair_ -

 

Trowa had thought it was a dream, a nightmare - some kind of death hallucination when Duo had held him and Trowa had seen the unevenly-severed hair curling around Duo’s shoulders.

 

But now it had been evened out, tendrils falling against Duo’s neck and just barely brushing the collar of his shirt.

 

“Your hair.” He tried to lift a hand to touch it, but he couldn’t summon the strength.

 

Duo’s lips twisted.

 

“Yeah. _My_ hair,” he said. “You got a problem with it?” The front was there, aggressive and challenging, but Trowa could see it, could _hear_ the vulnerability there.

 

“Suits you,” he managed to rasp, and Duo’s face relaxed.

 

A throat was cleared, and Trowa jerked away from Duo, reaching for a weapon he didn’t have.

 

Une stood in the opposite corner of the room. The hospital room, Trowa realized.

 

Her arms were folded over her chest, and she was wearing a skirt, jacket and blouse in shades of dull gray that made Trowa wonder if something was wrong with his vision.

 

The expression on her face was somewhere between annoyed and bored.

 

“Agent Barton. There are some things we need to discuss. You’ve been unconscious for the better part of four days, and time is critical. We need-”

 

“ _You_ need to back the fuck off,” Duo warned.

 

“Agent Maxwell.” Une was definitely annoyed now.

 

“I told you, I’m out. We’re both _out_. We’re done with this shit.”

 

Une merely arched an eyebrow, unmoved by Duo’s scathing tone or the frozen anger of Shinigami in his eyes.

 

Instead, she turned her full attention back on Trowa.

 

“Your associate, Anhil. We believe he has information that can help us track down the remaining contractors on L3 that the Sinaloa-”

 

“Salome,” Trowa interrupted, looking to Duo. “Is she-”

 

“Sally got her,” Duo answered with grim satisfaction. “She and Alessandra - well, Veta took care of Alessandra.”

 

“Veta?”

 

Duo’s grin was sharp.

 

“Yeah. She-”

 

“Gentlemen. If I can have your attention. We need-”

 

“Look, Director, I respect you, and I don’t want to get arrested, so I’m not going to shoot you, but you need to _leave_ right now,” Duo growled. “I don’t know how many times I have to say it, but we no longer _work for you_. We aren’t doing shit. Trowa isn’t going to help you anymore. We-”

 

“I’m not?” Trowa asked.

 

Duo’s rant was derailed by the question, and he looked at Trowa.

 

“No. We’re done. We’ve done enough, Tro. We-”

 

“My life,” Trowa said. “My call.”

 

Duo looked mutinous, jaw locking and nostrils flaring, but they had spent too long watching each other’s backs to have an argument in front of a threat.

 

“Excuse me, Mr. Barton?”

 

The tension in the room was broken by the arrival of a woman in dark blue scrubs. She was slim and dark-skinned, and despite the polite tone, the look in her eyes made it clear that she had lost patience with the world in general about one hundred years ago.

 

“Yeah?”

 

“I’m Alison, your nurse. I need to examine the incision site.”

 

“Can that wait?” Une asked.

 

“No, it can’t fucking wait,” Duo snarled. “This is his fucking health, and he’s not-”

 

“Now would be great,” Trowa sighed.

 

Alison looked at both Duo and Une and lifted her eyebrows.

 

“You two can wait outside,” she said when neither gave any indication of moving.

 

“I won’t get in the way,” Duo protested, not budging from Trowa’s side.

 

“Not outside, you won’t,” Alison agreed, and made a shooing gesture.

 

It would have been funny, this civilian _shooing_ one of the most deadly men in the entire Earthsphere. It should have been funny. But all that Trowa felt was exhaustion and pain, aching and throbbing in time to his heartbeat.

 

Duo waited until Une walked out of the room before following, shooting a glance back over his shoulder towards Trowa, holding his gaze until Alison firmly shut the door in his face.

 

“I take it your mother doesn’t approve of your boyfriend,” Alison said as she moved to Trowa’s bedside.

 

Trowa stared at her in confusion.

 

“What? I-” Oh _God._

 

She thought _Une_ was his _mother_?

 

Surely, she knew who he was - she had called him Mr. Barton. Had Une-

 

“I’m sorry, that was a joke. I’ll hold off on making another until you’re not quite as high on pain medications.”

 

“Oh.” It was all he could think of to say.

 

“Mm.”

 

Alison seemed efficient, her touch somewhere between clinical and gentle, and Trowa found himself admitting just how much pain he was really in when she asked.

 

She gave him something, more medications to combat infection, something for anxiety that he tried to balk at until she pointed out that the last time she had taken him off _that,_ he had ripped out his central line and almost ended up going back into surgery for the fourth time.

 

“Get some rest,” she advised as she gave him another dose of pain medication. “You’re safe, and you’re healing. You need to rest.”

 

“Duo,” he said, and he didn’t know if it was a protest or a request.

 

“Do you want me to send him in, or can I send him home? He’s been a menace these last few days. Hasn’t left the floor since you arrived in the ICU.”

 

Trowa frowned. He honestly didn’t _know_ if he wanted Duo with him or not. He wanted to touch him again, wanted to run his fingers over the scar on Duo’s left forearm from that mission they had barely survived, a clusterfuck on L3 that had been their first assignment together. Duo had gotten the scar by being an asshole, throwing himself between Trowa and a man twice his size, and taking a knife to the forearm that had been meant for Trowa’s back.

 

“Rest.” Alison pressed a hand to his shoulder, and Trowa closed his eyes.

 

*

 

There was blood everywhere. Warm and thick on his hands, clumped in his hair, metallic tang poisoning his tongue, and still, Trowa pressed down.

 

He had to stop it. There had to be a way to stop the blood, to stop- to _save_ him.

 

But Duo was pale and still below him, chest stained so dark it was nearly black, and nothing Trowa did could stop the tide.

 

And behind him, Salome laughed. She laughed and laughed and-

 

“Trowa.”

 

He snapped awake immediately, hand going under his pillow for the plastic knife that a nurse hadn’t noticed was missing when he took away Trowa’s nearly untouched food that... morning? Afternoon? Yesterday?

 

The room was dark and still, cold and silent in a way that made Trowa’s breath catch.

 

“Trowa.”

 

His name, spoken again in a low voice.

 

He looked to his right and saw Heero sitting in a chair, face barely illuminated by the monitors over Trowa’s bed.

 

“Duo,” he panted, the image of his lifeless face still floating before Trowa’s eyes.

 

Heero stood up.

 

“He’s gone.”

 

“ _Gone_?”

 

It had been a dream, hadn’t it? A _dream_. He couldn’t be-

 

Trowa remembered Salome’s laugh, could feel the cruel curve of her smile chasing a shudder up his spine. He felt his guts twist, felt something burning and bitter on his tongue, and he struggled to sit up.

 

Heero was there immediately, hands pushing Trowa back down even as Trowa pushed against him.

 

Tears pricked at his eyes.

 

 _Gone_.

 

All of that, _all of that,_ and Duo was gone. How- He couldn’t remember anything. Hadn’t he touched Duo? Hadn’t he heard his voice and-

 

“What the hell is going on?”

 

It was Quatre, stepping into the room with a scowl on his face.

 

“I don’t know,” Heero snapped. “He woke up asking for Duo, and then he started to panic and-”

 

“Trowa,” Quatre hip-checked Heero to the side and replaced Heero’s hands with his own. His touch was gentler, but no less firm. “Trowa.”

 

He looked up at the blond-haired man.

 

“He’s gone?” Trowa hated his voice, hated how raw and broken it was.

 

Quatre’s brows furrowed together.

 

“Yes. He went home to shower and shave. He was starting to smell. He’ll be back in the morning.”

 

“He’s alive?”

 

“Yes. He’s alive, Trowa.”

 

Trowa sucked in a breath, trembling with the force of his relief.

 

Duo was alive.

 

Quatre glared over at Heero.

 

“What?” Heero demanded, folding his arms over himself protectively. “He asked, and I said he was gone.”

 

“He thought Duo was _dead_ ,” Quatre hissed.

 

“How was I supposed to know that?”

 

Quatre muttered something under his breath, and then turned back to Trowa. He rubbed his hands over Trowa’s shoulders and down his arms, the touch grounding, reminding Trowa that he was in his own skin, his own broken body.

 

Duo was alive. And Trowa was alive.

 

“How are you feeling?” Quatre asked him eventually.

 

“Like I got shot.”

 

Quatre’s lips quirked, and even Heero, back in his seat, let out a chuckle.

 

“You need to stop doing that,” Quatre admonished him, one hand smoothing over Trowa’s stubble-rough cheeks before carding through his hair.

 

Trowa sighed, and let his head fall back and his eyes close as Quatre continued to work his fingers through Trowa’s hair.

 

“I’ll work on it, _mladshiy brat_.”

 

“Duo quit Preventers,” Heero spoke up.

 

“Mm.” So that hadn’t been a dream. Duo had been there. So had Une.

 

“He said he would kill anyone who tried to get you to go back,” Quatre added.

 

“Wufei said he would help hide the bodies,” Heero continued.

 

Trowa snorted a laugh. He could so clearly picture that conversation in his mind’s eye that it was a little unnerving. There was a _reason_ Wufei and Duo didn’t get put on ops together. Well, there were reasons that went beyond Wufei’s complete inability to comprehend ‘undercover’.

 

“I don’t get any say in my own life?” Trowa sighed, fully aware that with Quatre still petting him and the pathetic state he was in, hooked up to machines and too weak to even get out of his bed to piss without assistance, that the words sounded petulant.

 

“Of course you do,” Quatre’s voice was firm. “But you’re not making decisions about your _life,_ Trowa, you’re trying to make them for your death.”

 

That… that was probably true.

 

Trowa hadn’t thought about it like that, not in those terms, but Quatre wasn’t wrong.

 

Trowa had always known that he was living on borrowed time. For as long as he could remember, he had known death was just a few steps behind him, and he had spent his entire life waiting for it to catch him.

 

“What do you want, Trowa? Is this… is this the _life_ that you want?” Quatre’s voice was kind, painfully sincere, and Trowa finally pushed his hands away.

 

“I don’t know,” he said, because Quatre deserved honesty from him.

 

“You should think about it,” Quatre said. “If you’re going to go around getting shot, you should at least know _why_ you’re doing it.”

 

*

 

“ _Razovyom my beryozu, razovyom my kudryavu! Ai-da, da ai-da, ai-da, da ai-da, razovyom my kudryavu._ ”   


It was Duo singing.

 

Trowa recognized it this time. His voice wasn’t as deep as the voice from Trowa’s memory, and it was richer - rougher, somehow.

 

He opened his eyes and saw Duo looking right at him.

 

“Hey,” Trowa said.

 

Duo’s lips tipped up into a crooked smile.

 

“Nice to see you too, asshole,” Duo said, and it startled a smile out of Trowa.

 

“I love you,” Trowa said, the words slipping out entirely of their own volition, and without any conscious thought on his part.

 

Duo’s smile froze for a second, his eyes growing wide, and Trowa suddenly and acutely wished he could get out of the hospital bed and run the fuck away.

 

“I know you do,” Duo said. He reached out and took Trowa’s right hand, lacing their fingers together and squeezing. “I know you do, Trowa. And I love you, Tro. I love you so much it fucking terrifies me.”

 

“You’re not scared of anything,” Trowa scoffed.

 

Duo snorted in blatant disagreement.

 

“I’m not insane, Tro. I’m scared. I’m scared _shitless_ of losing you. I- I can’t do that again, Tro. I can’t watch you do that again.”

 

“I’m not in a hurry to get shot again, either,” Trowa sighed.

 

“That’s not- that’s not what I’m talking about, Trowa.”

 

Duo waited until he had Trowa’s full attention, his indigo gaze dark, and his mouth a firm, pale line.

 

“You were waiting to die, Trowa. The whole time I was there - fuck, who the fuck _knows_ how long before I got there - you were waiting to die. You gave up, Trowa. You- you were _gone_ , _payaso_.”

 

“I wasn’t gone. I didn’t give up. I was doing my _job_ , Duo, and I-”

 

“And just what the fuck was that, huh? What the _fuck_ were you doing on that fucking op? We both- Fuck, _everyone_ knows that op should have been mine, and you shouldn’t have been there in the first fucking place. And then when I _do_ get there to save your ass-”

 

“I don’t need you to save me,” Trowa pulled away from Duo’s hand.

 

Duo arched an eyebrow at him, and pointedly looked at Trowa’s body stretched out in the hospital bed.

 

“That’s not-” Trowa groaned in frustration. He could never find the right words with Duo. “I’m always waiting to die, Duo,” he finally admitted. Quatre’s words, his face, came back to him. “You’re right. I was waiting to die, and hoping I could do something halfway decent before my time was up.”

 

Duo was quiet for several minutes, and Trowa was too much of a coward to look at him.

 

“You’re so full of shit, Trowa.”

 

 _That_ got his attention. He looked over at Duo and saw that the other man’s jaw was locked, his lips pinched and his eyes dark with fury.

 

“‘Something halfway decent before your time is up’? What the _fuck_ is wrong with you? Do you _not_ remember fighting a fucking war when we were fucking fifteen? And then doing that shit all over again a year later? Do you _not_ remember the last ten fucking years? Tell me what kind of batshit fucking crazy heroics you have to pull off for it to qualify as ‘halfway decent’, because from _my_ seat, all you’ve ever done is put your life on the line acting like a damn hero and saving the world over and over again.”

 

“It’s not good enough, Duo. I’m not- _I’m_ not good enough.”

 

“So now you’re insulting me.”

 

Trowa frowned in confusion.

 

“What? No, I’m not-”

 

“I told you I’m in love with you, and then you sit there and tell me that you aren’t _good enough,_ so what - you take the one fucking thing I love, the one _person_ I love, and shit all over them? That’s insulting, Trowa.”

 

“You’re so fucking impossible,” Trowa snapped.

 

“You’re damn right I am. Get used to it.”

 

Trowa glared.

 

“You quit,” he reminded Duo. “I do remember that.”

 

Duo’s grin was fierce.

 

“Oh no, you remembered that just fine. Which means I’ve got all the time in the world to sit on my ass and wait for you to come home from your stupid fucking ops. You still want to play soldier? Fine. It’s your life, right? You do that, and I’ll be there waiting for you to come back to me, and when you _don’t_ come back, when you go out and never come back and leave me like fucking everyone else, I’ll deal with that, won’t I?”

 

“That’s not fair.”

 

“You know what’s not fair, Trowa? What’s not fucking fair is watching you try to _kill yourself,_ and then being made to feel like the bad guy because I want you to want to _live_.”

 

They glared at each other. It could have lasted for seconds or minutes or hours. Trowa had no idea.

 

“What else am I going to do?” he finally asked.

 

“ _Anything_ ,” Duo’s response was immediate. “Trowa, you - we - can do anything. Anything you want. We can go anywhere, we can do whatever the fuck we want.” Duo took his hand again. “Just don’t give up on me, Trowa. Please.”

 

 _Please_.

 

Duo didn’t play fair at all.

 

He sighed.

 

“Get me out of here,” Trowa begged.

 

“Can you even walk?” Duo looked at him dubiously.

 

“I can sit in a wheelchair.”

 

Duo snorted.

 

“You lazy fuck.” He leaned over the bed and kissed Trowa, a swift, possessive crush of their lips that left Trowa feeling breathless and lightheaded. “I love you,” Duo said the words again, and then stepped away.

 

*

 

For once, Duo drove the speed limit.

 

It should have made Trowa worry, but he was too focused on trying not to panic after the phone call he had just had with Une.

 

He had quit. He had said the words himself. He had walked away - well, was being driven away - from the only order and logic his life had. He was turning his back on the one purpose he had found, the one _place_ where he could exist.

 

Trowa looked over at Duo, at the way the setting sun bathed his profile in golden light.

 

Duo felt his eyes and glanced over, a smile lurking in his eyes and on the corners of his mouth.

 

“I love you,” Trowa said it again, and the smile on Duo’s face made his chest hurt in a way that wasn’t entirely about pain.

 

Duo held his right hand out between them, and Trowa took it with his left. It brought their tattoos together, Duo’s lion and Trowa’s promise.

 

 _‘Til Death_.

 

He had always thought that would be sooner rather than later. Had always known it would be _too_ soon.

 

Duo drove past the highway exit to their apartment.

 

“Where are we going?”

 

Duo licked his lips and looked a little uneasy.

 

“Home?”

 

Trowa hooked a thumb over his shoulder, indicating the apartment they were rapidly leaving behind.

 

“That’s not home.”

 

He hadn’t even really needed to hear Duo say the words. Just thinking about it, picturing the rooms with their blackout curtains, the empty walls and the mismatched, serviceable furniture. There was nothing there, except for a few books, a turbine from some pre-colonial ship Duo had salvaged, clothes… Nothing, really, that couldn’t be replaced. Nothing that made it _home_.

 

Trowa squeezed Duo’s hand.

 

“Sounds good.”

 

Home turned out to be the _Peacemillion_ , docked at the shuttleport two hours away.

 

Trowa hesitated when Duo parked the car on the tarmac.

 

“We don’t have to,” Duo said.

 

“No,” Trowa sighed. “No. This is good.”

 

He followed Duo up the service ramp, lowered and nonchalantly guarded by a sailor who blinked and mumbled an awed greeting to Duo, and then stared at Trowa as they walked past.

 

Howard was in his office, feet propped up on his perpetually cluttered desk. His sunglasses were on, his head tilted back at an unnatural angle, and he was snoring.

 

Duo and Trowa exchanged smirks.

 

“Hey, old man!”

 

Howard startled awake, arms momentarily flailing before he pulled himself upright.

 

Even behind the glasses, Trowa could feel the heat of his glare.

 

“Permission to come aboard?” Duo asked with the same cheeky grin he had worn when he told his OZ interrogators to do increasingly anatomically impossible things to themselves.

 

“You fucking punk,” Howard sighed.

 

He got to his feet, shoved his sunglasses onto his head, and looked both of them over.

 

“You okay?” Howard asked.

 

Duo nodded.

 

“Gonna be,” Duo said after looking over at Trowa.

 

Trowa nodded in agreement to that.

 

“Yeah, well. Good. How long’re you two staying this time?”

 

Duo arched an eyebrow at Trowa.

 

“As long as you’ll have us,” Trowa decided.

 

Howard’s lips twitched under his mustache, and he came around the desk.

 

He hugged Duo, and then, to Trowa’s complete shock, wrapped his arms around Trowa.

 

“I’m going to hold you to that, son,” Howard said, voice gruff with unfamiliar emotion.

 

The words made Trowa’s throat constrict, but he managed to nod.

 

“Thank you.”

 

Howard released him, and snorted.

 

“Don’t thank me until you’ve eaten a meal here. I swear to fuck, our new chef is trying to fucking poison us. And the mechanics - oh, Trowa, Trowa, you need to see these guys. Please, teach them _something,_ will ya? They’re killing me. And that security tech you recommended, Duo? He’s a fucking child. A toddler. Barely knows how to wipe his own nose.”

 

Howard continued to complain as he led them out of his office and towards the crew quarters.

 

“This okay?” Duo asked, his voice low.

 

Trowa took his hand again.

 

“It’s good to be home,” Trowa assured him.

 

-o-

 

THE END

(except for a very smutty epilogue courtesy of CB - you all are welcome)  


* * *

 

Translations:

 

 _“Yeshcho razik, yeshcho da raz! Ey, ukhnem! Ey, ukhnem! Yeshcho razik, yeshcho da raz!”_ : From a Russian folksong, the Volga Boatmen,

Once more, once again, still once more  
Yo, heave ho!   
Yo, heave ho!   
Once more, once again, still once more

 

 _Payaso_ : Spanish for clown. Meant as an insult.

 

 _mladshiy brat_ : Russian for ‘little brother’

 

 _Razovyom my beryozu, razovyom my kudryavu! Ai-da, da ai-da, ai-da, da ai-da, razovyom my kudryavu_ _:_ From the same Russian folksong, the Volga Boatmen,

Now we fell the stout birch tree,  
Now we pull hard: one, two, three.   
Ay-da, da, ay-da!   
Ay-da, da, ay-da!   
Now we pull hard: one, two, three.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note from Clara:  
> CB doesn't know I'm doing this, but that's what happens when I get stuck uploading chapters because she's at work saving lives and being a general badass.
> 
> Writing this fic has been one of the greatest pleasures of my life. When CB and I first starting talking about this.... wow, almost a year ago now, I was so full of excitement and trepidation because our friendship was still fairly new and because I know what a pain in the ass I am.
> 
> But you know that feeling when you meet someone and they change your life? You know that feeling when they SAVE your life? That was CB, for me. She's more than a friend, so much more than a writing partner, and I will never be able to accurately express how much she means and how damn lucky I am to have her in my life.
> 
> This fic is undoubtedly my favorite thing I have ever written, and really that's BECAUSE of CB. Working with her, sharing the writing, sharing the character growth and the creation and getting to see how she works and share how I work - it's been of the best gifts I've ever had.
> 
> I also wanted to thank everyone who read this fic and took the time to comment on it. CB and I both appreciate so damn much the encouraging words, the flailing, the wonderfully incisive commentary - all of it. Thank you so very, very much.


	12. The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

__

_ And the first time ever I kissed your mouth, _

_ I felt the earth move through my hands. _

_ Like the trembling heart of a captive bird _

_ That was there at my command. _

_ \- Johnny Cash _

* * *

 

They’d debriefed him while Trowa had been in surgery. 

 

Now that Duo had some perspective, nearly a year and a half later, he thought that had been the deciding factor. He’d intended to quit anyway - he couldn’t watch Trowa passively die anymore, and he was sick of blurred lines and nearly overwhelming guilt. But he’d planned to do it the right way - with resignations and clearance revocations, and maybe helping to train up a couple of replacements.

 

Then the fiasco at the hospital had set him off.  

 

Duo was normally pretty even-keeled.  He could put up with a lot - had put up with a lot, his whole life, truth be told - but he had little to no patience for anything involving Trowa, or, really, any of the other pilots, and  _ someone _ had decided that he deserved some comeuppance for everything that had gone down with Sinaloa. 

 

He’d pissed Une off. Duo knew he had, when he’d burned the op and set off the chain of events that had led to the raid on the compound before all the intel was in-hand. It hadn’t helped the situation any when, thanks to Duo’s interference and Quatre’s little black button, the blond-haired billionaire and Heero had come charging onto the scene in a conveniently stocked helicopter using bypass codes that Duo was fairly certain Une had given them for use only in the event of a nuclear apocalypse. 

 

It probably also hadn’t helped that Duo had leapt onto the helicopter with Trowa, still keeping pressure on his wound, still covered in blood, and had done nothing to further the other agents’ efforts to secure the area.  To be fair, he’d been relatively certain he was supposed to be rounded up as part of the securement, but still. 

 

Quatre, at least, had had the good grace to offer to transport Merquise as well, despite Duo’s general disgruntlement with the other man. 

 

Duo genuinely didn’t know why Une had even been surprised.  The pilots had been closing ranks with regularity since before the end of the wars; it was hardly unexpected that they’d do so now, with one of their own incapacitated and possibly dying.  Wufei had turned up at the hospital mere hours after they’d arrived, his face set in the look of bullish stubbornness that had characterized both his wartime activities and his Preventers investigations, and had applied it liberally to the entire situation, increasing Une’s ire exponentially, Duo had no doubt.

 

So, Trowa had been whisked off to surgery - hours of internal structure repair, units of blood, liver lacerations and god only knew what else - and Duo off to a room not much bigger than a closet, and which was probably intended for uncomfortable family meetings rather than interrogations masquerading as debriefings. 

 

It had certainly  _ felt _ like an interrogation.  Hours of repeating himself, explaining himself, and being prodded first by senior agents who didn’t quite outrank him, and then by Une herself, whose pursed-lip countenance had reminded Duo entirely too much of his time on the Lunar Base. It hadn’t helped that he’d sat through it covered in a combination of sweat, grime, and Trowa’s blood still caked under his fingernails and drying tacky on his pants.  Then, when Duo had finally been released - given dubiously-acquired hospital scrubs to wear and a paper cup of coffee and told to sit in the waiting room - he’d had to walk past Merquise’s room. Merquise, who was bitching up a storm about the lack of amenities and griping at the nurses that  _ he’d been shot, for God’s sake, he should be able to get a damn cup of coffee _ , and it had been all Duo could do not to go in there and dump the scalding cup in his hand over the asshole’s pretentious fuckin’ head.

 

He was, Duo thought bitterly, lucky that it had been Anhil who had shot him, and not Duo.  They’d had to dig a bullet out of his hip, instead of his head during an autopsy.

 

Then there were more surgeries and more close calls, and Trowa had been touch and go for days, and luckily for Merquise, he’d been discharged before Trowa had woken up, because that meant Duo had been too busy keeping watch to be bothered to suffocate him with a pillow.

 

Though he’d gotten the impression the nurses might have been willing to do it for him. 

 

In the end, Trowa had been fine - he  _ was _ fine - and something Quatre had said to the man had finally seemed to penetrate his thick, stubborn skull, because eventually, he’d agreed to leave with Duo.  To leave Preventers behind, to leave their violent pasts behind, and to go with Howard while they sorted themselves out.

 

Duo had never intended the  _ Peacemillion _ to be a permanent solution.  He had just wanted familiar surroundings that said  _ safe _ to all their combined instincts.  Somewhere he and Trowa could feel useful, but not pressured.  Secure, but not coddled. 

 

Howard wasn’t much for coddling anyway.  He’d put both of them to work immediately, Duo sorting out the electronics techs and Trowa supervising (terrorizing) the engineers until he was strong enough to get his hands dirty again.  The jokes that he and Trowa had made in Mexico about their slightly terrifying reputations aboard Howard’s ship hadn’t really been jokes, after all. And they really  _ had _ broken a table once, though it had been accidental rather than intentional, and it hadn’t exactly been during a fight.

 

Six months on board the ship had taken care of most of the shadows under Trowa’s eyes, the remainder of his physical rehab, and as many of the nightmares as could reasonably be expected considering their pasts. 

 

It wasn’t like they didn’t both have them, after all. 

 

Trowa had said something about missing the water, offhand, like he wasn’t paying attention to what he was saying, like Duo didn’t register and catalogue everything the other man said, and Duo had started house hunting.

 

Something small, something they could come back to, whenever they wanted, if they wanted. Something that gave them the option of hitching rides with Howard, or flying to wherever suited them.

 

And, Duo thought, something as far from Preventers’ North American location as was possible to get.

 

Maybe something close to the maximum security prison Anhil had been transferred to, once he had been medically cleared.  

 

Trowa, Duo knew, had a lot of unresolved issues regarding the enforcer. Things he wanted to say, and some things he probably wanted to hear.  Duo wasn’t sure how that was going to go, but he was pretty sure it was something Trowa had to do.

 

So, a house.

 

He found a house in Carpinteria, something small and overpriced, but close to the beach, with space to store surfboards and a backyard that had enough plants and fencing to feel private and secure.  Carpinteria was close enough to the port in L.A. to make the drive reasonable to and from  _ Peacemillion _ ’s infrequent docking schedule, small enough to make watching their backs easy, and with enough young, hipster types to make blending in relatively easy, even with all their tattoos and hair. 

 

Plus, good surfing, and only an hour and a half from the correctional facility where Anhil was incarcerated.

 

Trowa hadn’t said anything when Duo took him to the house the first time, but his lips had curved into a small, pleased smile, and he’d dropped his duffle on the bed with no hesitation before slipping out to explore the rest of the house and the neighborhood.

 

It was the best Duo could have hoped for.

 

They were at home now for the first time in a couple of months, only a few days off-ship, falling into an exhausted sleep brought on by a day of surfing and other, more naked activities, when Duo was dragged into awareness by the unnatural stillness that followed Trowa’s most hideous nightmares.

 

Duo, typically, woke up gasping for air, his body having never forgotten the feeling of near-suffocation on the moon.  Trowa, on the other hand, froze with the stillness of a corpse, breathing shallowly, his heart thrumming in his chest.

 

“What is it?” Duo rasped, sliding his hand from Trowa’s hip to his chest, pressing him closer to his body.  

 

“Nothing.  It’s nothing.  I’m fine.”

 

Duo snorted.  “You’re a liar, is what you are.”  He pressed his face into the back of Trowa’s head, smelling the generic shampoo and scent of the ocean that still clung to his skin despite their shower. “We’re ok.  We’re home. You’re safe.” Duo paused. “I’m safe.”

 

Trowa made a noise in the back of his throat and tangled his fingers with Duo’s.  “I know.”

 

*

 

Duo was waiting with quietly-leashed impatience when the guards brought Anhil through the door into the room they reserved for conversation with law enforcement and prosecutors. It was wired for both video and sound, which wasn’t perfect, but it would have to do.  He’d dressed like an adult today - or at least, that’s what Heero had snorted at him when he’d helped him make the arrangements - in a suit and tie, his shorter hair slicked back into a stubby ponytail at the base of his neck.

 

He still hadn’t quite gotten used to the lack of weight on his back.

 

Anhil balked as he limped into the room, wrists and ankles bound in long, clinking chains, but the guards urged him forward with something that wasn’t quite a shove, and he was sat in a chair across from Duo, cuffs threaded through a bar for that purpose.  The guards left at a motion from Duo, eyeing the two of them dubiously, and then the door closed behind them, leaving Duo and Anhil in silence.

 

They stared at one another across the table for a minute or two until Duo snorted.  He lifted his wrist, pressing a small button on the side of his watch and then tossing it on the table.  The timer started counting down from fifteen minutes, which was all the unmonitored time Heero had been able to ensure Duo would get, the cameras in the room now on a continuous loop.

 

“Is this what you two do,” Duo asked, “stare at each other for twenty minutes in silence a couple of times a month?”

 

Anhil didn’t answer, though his face tightened at the reminder that Trowa came up for visiting hours regularly when they were planetside.

 

“I don’t have anything to say to either of you  _ chingados _ .” 

 

Duo shrugged.

 

Preventers had, Duo knew, been trying to force Anhil’s cooperation since the raid.  The man had said nothing to any of them, even at his trial, where he’d been treated as a hostile witness and sat in silence on the stand before being sentenced to life with no possibility of parole.  Trowa and Duo hadn’t been at the trial, but Quatre had kept them updated. 

 

“I don’t really have much to say to you either,  _ hermano _ . We only have a few minutes to talk though, so maybe you should think about listening.”  Duo cut his eyes at the clock that was slowly counting down. “I brought you something.”

 

“I don’t want it,” Anhil said immediately.  

 

“I think you might,” Duo countered.  “I know things Prev doesn’t know,  _ jefe _ , and I take care of them.”

 

Anhil’s eyes flicked over Duo in disdain, taking in the expensive suit, the watch, the lax way he slouched in his chair.

 

“Is anything about you real,  _ lisichka _ ?” the other man sneered.

 

Duo sighed, cracking his neck.  “Everything about me is real,  _ hermano _ , that’s the problem.”  He slid a folder across the table to Anhil, though the other man made no move to pick it up.  Duo rolled his eyes. “Just open the fuckin’ folder and look. I gotta get the hell outta here soon.”

 

He and Trowa had no criminal records to speak of, everything quietly swept away under their former Preventers covers, but Duo didn’t think Une would take kindly to him impersonating an agent, now that his resignation was finalized in black and white and he was collecting a pension. Hacking the prison system had gotten him in, and it would get him out with no trace of his visit, but guards gossiped like old women, and Duo wanted this visit as short and unmemorable as possible.

 

His jaw tight with temper and eyes wary, Anhil finally reached out and jerked the folder over as much as he could with his limited range of motion.  He flipped angrily through the pages in the folder, and when he looked back up at Duo, he looked positively  _ furious _ .

 

“What the fuck is this?”

 

Duo knew what was in the folder, had gone through it meticulously before he’d even thought about showing it to Anhil.  Inside was possibly the only thing that Anhil cared about. A young woman and two small children, one boy and one girl.  The pictures had a surveillance quality to them, for all that they weren’t being watched by any government agency, because Heero had taken them.  

 

“They’re in Puerto Aventuras,” Duo said, only kind of answering the question.  “Safe. A small house. Camila has a job. Alejandro and Sofia are in school. Their address is in the file, if you want to write them.”

 

Duo could nearly hear Anhil grinding his teeth.  The man didn’t look any less furious, though he flipped back to the beginning of the folder to look through it more slowly, to finger the photographs inside.

 

“What do you want?” he asked finally, the time still ticking down on the clock. Less than five minutes remaining.

 

“Nothing,” Duo answered firmly.

 

Anhil slid two of the photos - one of the three of them on the beach near their home, and one of just the kids walking down the street hand-in-hand - and the small slip of paper that Duo had handwritten an address on out of the folder before passing it back over to Duo.  “I’m not thanking you for this,” he said, his voice low and tight.

 

“I didn’t do it for you.”

 

Duo stood up, snagging the watch-turned-jammer off the table and wrapping it back around his wrist.  Reaching over, he paused just before his fingers touched the items Anhil had kept and raised an eyebrow.  The other man lifted them slightly, which Duo took for permission. He slid them from Anhil’s fingers and into the front pocket of the orange jumpsuit.  Turning away, Duo walked to the door and knocked to be let out

 

Two weeks later, when Trowa returned from his regularly-scheduled visit with an easing of tension from his shoulders that made him look almost like the young man he was, Duo felt the knot of dread in his stomach that was a constant companion uncurl, a little.

 

*

 

Duo threw himself onto the sand in front of Trowa, tucked up between the other man’s knees, and leaned back into his chest. They’d been in and out of the water for hours, catching waves at the beach near their house, and Duo felt pleasantly loose and relaxed, muscle-fatigued in the way that only physical exertion provided.  They stared out over the ocean in silence, the sun falling lower in the sky.

 

The moment was oddly reminiscent of another beach far away, in another time. 

 

Duo wished he hadn’t thought of that. 

 

He took a deep breath and leaned farther into Trowa’s embrace.  Trowa sighed into his neck, pushing Duo’s sopping hair to the other shoulder, and Duo wondered if his thoughts had taken the same depressing, unwanted turn.  

 

“Take me home,” he said instead of asking, and he felt Trowa smile against his skin. 

 

“Or lose you forever?” Trowa misquoted, and Duo snorted softly. 

 

“I’m not goin’ anywhere Tro,” he responded. 

 

“I know.” 

 

And for the first time, he really sounded like he believed it. 

 

They showered in silence, water sluicing off the last of the sand and salt, fingers chasing warm rivulets and soap suds, breathless kisses exchanged under the scalding water. 

 

By the time they made it to bed, Duo was already rock hard and panting in anticipation, and Trowa-

 

Well, Trowa was moving at the frustrating speed of an ice age glacier. 

 

“Come on, come on,” Duo groaned, as Trowa dragged his hands down Duo’s sides in a touch that was only this side of ticklish. Just firm enough to tease, and not enough to give him any kind of release. He wrapped his legs around the other man’s hips and pulled, trying to force their bodies together. 

 

“Slow down,  _ zvezda _ _ , _ ” Trowa chuckled, as his mouth traced over Duo’s sternum. “We have all night.”   

 

His lips against Duo’s chest were electric, especially as they dragged over the newly-healed tattoo on his sternum, the one that Trowa was probably still trying to make sense of.  Duo hadn’t explained. He’d simply laid down on Nikko’s table on  _ Peacemillion _ with a rough sketch and a vague idea of what he wanted the outcome to look like.  It was something  _ like  _ a compass.  Like the moon and the sun and the stars had gotten together and pointed in an unlabeled direction.  The colony clusters were in there too, if you looked close enough, L2 and L3 situated directly across from each other, as always.  Equal, reliable, always there. 

 

It was the closest Duo could come to explaining Trowa’s place in his life, etched into his skin.

 

Duo hummed and then groaned at the contact, the skin still sensitive, and arched upwards against Trowa’s bare skin.  His own fingers were busy, grazing across scarred skin, pausing at the puckered bullet wound on Trowa’s abdomen, where he had gotten his own tattoo, months before Duo, as soon as the skin was healed enough for the ink.  His was undeniably a compass, but the face was cracked where it followed Trowa’s scars, and was lacking a directional needle at all. 

 

They made a fine pair.

 

And then Duo stopped thinking about compasses or what they meant or how they fit together, because Trowa was alternating hot licks with blowing cool air over his cock in some sort of divine torture that he wasn’t sure what he’d done to deserve.

 

“Fuck, Tro, come  _ on _ ,” he whined, tugging at Trowa’s shoulders.

 

Green eyes lifted to meet his gaze, warm with lust and something else, soft in a way Duo wasn’t used to seeing, and a little amused.  “Do I need to tie you down?”

 

Duo’s cock twitched in response, and he swallowed hard.  “I did promise you could,” he responded, voice rough.

 

Trowa grinned sharply, his eyes darkening.  He seemed to consider it for a moment, before shaking his head.  “Next time,  _ zvezda _ , I promise.”  Smirking, he pressed Duo’s hands into the mattress, where he could twine his fingers in the sheets.  “Be still, hmm? Let me enjoy myself.”

 

Duo groaned, gripping at the soft cotton.  

 

He and Trowa had had a lot of sex over the years.  Mostly hurried, quick fucks, or the occasional marathon session, punctuated by harsh groans and harder grips. At the moment, Duo couldn’t think of another memory quite like this one, mostly quiet sighs and tender touches.  They weren’t - or they hadn’t been - soft men. There had always been an edge of danger, of secrecy, to their relationship.

 

An edge that had been lacking, lately, Duo had to admit.

 

He didn’t miss it, he was surprised to realize.

 

Duo leaned back against the pillows and let his thighs relax, kept his hands in the mussed sheets, and watched Trowa with lazy eyes.  “Enjoy yourself, then,  _ payaso _ , but don’t think I won’t repay the favor later.”

 

“I was counting on it,” Trowa retorted, leaning down to drag his tongue across Duo’s thighs, around his groin, and nowhere near where Duo really wanted it to be.  

 

It was slow, sweet torture of a kind Duo was completely unaccustomed to, but found himself shockingly, entirely into, once he gave himself over to it.

 

“Fuck, Trowa,” he groaned, as the other man wrapped a hand around his dick and gave it a lingering, experimental tug.

 

“We’re getting there,” was the response he got, just before Trowa’s mouth descended over his cock, intensely hot and wet, and Duo couldn’t help but buck into the touch.  Trowa allowed it, relaxing against the intrusion and letting Duo fuck his mouth, so long as he kept it slow and easy. He hummed around Duo, and Duo felt sparks go off behind his eyelids.

 

Duo lost all sense of time.  There was just the barely-there awareness of the sheets he was tugging in his grip and mostly the feel of Trowa’s hands and mouth and fingers, the leisurely pace he set, keeping Duo on-edge and never letting him tumble over, exploring scars and tattoos, old and new, the rough calluses on his palms the only thing grounding Duo in the moment.

 

Trowa hovered over Duo, watching his face, the green of his eyes nearly swallowed by the blackness of his pupils as he pumped up and down Duo’s cock in no kind of rhythm, making sure he kept Duo’s attention as he slid his fingers in and out of his body.  Duo could hardly keep his eyes open as he rocked into both touches, seeking all the pleasure he could reach.

 

Words were dripping out of his lips, but Duo had long since lost track of what they were, and he was only barely aware of the whining sound he made when Trowa slipped his hands from his body.  The other man made a soft, soothing noise as he twisted his wrist around the head of Duo’s cock, and then he was sliding his cock into Duo’s body, easier than it had ever gone before. Just the slightest sense of stretching, and then the deeply satisfying feeling of fullness, of  _ completion _ , that sex with Trowa always provided.

 

Duo sighed in contentment, reaching up to wrap an arm around Trowa’s shoulders.  Trowa paused, leaning down to kiss Duo. There was a moment, brief and nearly-missed, of unbearable tenderness, then Trowa shifted and Duo responded, and it turned filthy, teeth and tongues, and exactly the kind of kissing Duo craved.

 

“ _ Now _ will you fuck me?” Duo complained, a smile on his face.

 

Trowa snorted.  “No,” he retorted, all snark and sass, but his hips shifted into a rolling, dirty grind, making Duo see spots, and he figured that was answer enough.

 

Both of them were sweating, all their hard work from the shower long-since destroyed, and Duo could feel himself climbing to the sort of precipice he wasn’t sure he’d ever completely recover from.  It was a sudden vulnerability, almost terrifying in how much it was going to destroy him, and he gripped Trowa harder, burying his face in the space between his neck and shoulder as they rocked together.

 

He must have been making some kind of noise, because Trowa was making that same soothing sound again, was speaking to him low and almost-calm, except for the hitch in his breath and the emotion in his voice.

 

“ _ Vse otlichno. Ty v bezopasnosti. Ya zdes'. _ ”

 

Duo let go, and let himself trust.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Translations:
> 
> Chingados - motherfuckers (Spanish)  
> Hermano - brother (Spanish)  
> Jefe - boss (Spanish)  
> Lisichka - little fox (Russian)  
> Zvezda - my star (Russian)  
> Vse otlichno. Ty v bezopasnosti. Ya zdes. - Everything is fine. I’m here. You’re safe. (Russian)
> 
>  
> 
> Also - I would like it noted that Clara thinks she’s being sly with her previous chapter note BUT I SAW IT. Unfortunately I’m on mobile doing this upload, so nothing I write here will be as eloquent or well-written as what she said.
> 
> This fic has been an amazing journey that I am indescribably grateful for. The plotting and planning was as fun (or maybe more fun) than the writing - having another person to work with, to trouble shoot and outline, was absolutely fantastic for the overall quality of the story and the quality of my personal writing. 
> 
> Working with Clara has been doubly amazing, because she’s a wonderful and talented writer, and also because she’s a wonderful and talented person and NOT a pain in the ass. 
> 
> It’s been fun y’all. Thanks for reading <3

**Author's Note:**

> Clara’s thoughts: This has been an amazing journey. I still remember the days when I had Kangofu-CB blocked because I thought she was a porn bot. But she’s not, though she does have great taste in porn. She’s an amazing writer, an overwhelmingly fantastic person, and I’m beyond lucky to have her as my partner in crime. This story has been a labor of love from the very beginning. And while some parts have been more labor than love, she has always been amazing - creative and fantastic and supportive and brilliant. Please enjoy this thing we made together, because there is so very much of us in here, and we are so excited to finally share it with all of you. 
> 
> CB’s words: Clara wrote her note first and said all of the good things already. Just know that being recognized as not a porn bot has been one of the best things that has ever happened to me. SEMPAI NOTICED ME!!! But also, this collaboration has been a wonderful thing for me as a person and a writer and a friend, and it has been a joy - well, ok, some of it was a bit of a slog through murky waters - but the benefit of writing together cannot be overstated both in terms of how much it has improved me as a writer and my ability to give and take constructive criticism, but also in the quality of the finished product for, I think, both of us. Clara is an tremendously brilliant writer and human, and I am still blown away that she’s the least bit interested in writing ANYTHING with me, much less this amazing story. Seriously, we hope you love it as much as we do.
> 
> Thanks to Ro, as always, for the tremendously fantastic beta reading and editing - everything you touch is improved by your input!


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